AC Geist
by Gilt
Summary: A reimagining, of sorts, of Silent Line: Armored Core, with a stronger emphasis on the conflict along the Silent Line itself; not quite a novelization of the game as such, though shading in that direction. Parts one and two of three, or perhaps four.
1. Foreword

**F****OREWORD**

I long debated the attendant merits and demerits of a foreword, unsure whether my modest work truly warranted as much, but in the end, the balance of relevant factors was sufficient to impress upon me its necessity.

_Armored Core: Geist_ was born of nothing more or less than my slowly mounting frustration with the series' repeated - I would say almost _willful_ - narrative failings. Though I imagine that few, if any at all, are drawn to AC titles for their writing, I've long believed nevertheless that there lurks within them a great deal of potential, most of which has been squandered - with nigh criminal indifference - on flat or fractured storylines largely bereft of personality. The length and breadth of _Armored Core 3_ resounded with the unspoken question of how best to balance government authority and efficacy against the rights of its citizenry, a timeless and poignant theme that the game effectively hamstrung before it was even out of the gate; _Silent Line_, the tale of nothing if not the triumphs and perils of the rebirth of civilization itself, fairly hummed with energy all but pleading - in the end to no avail - to be turned loose.

And so, as my dissatisfaction inexorably rose toward the boiling point one summer, I at last took the matter into my own hands, the results of which fill the pages ahead. While I've long held to the opinion that _Armored Core 3_, in the right hands, would serve as the basis for an excellent novel, my own efforts coalesced instead around its successor, in which I saw the building blocks of something greater than the sequence of events awkwardly strung together in a rude imitation of storytelling. And as I contemplated the changes from which, in my opinion, it would benefit, the process slowly gathered pace, insensibly accruing momentum until, one day, I realized that I'd laid the groundwork of a revision that was an independent story unto itself. The random attacks on the Silent Line became a war, the Silent Line itself the front on which it was waged; the game's sundry missions gave way to pitched battles on the frontlines, and Ravens, though still the familiar specialists in 'dispute resolution', assumed a role akin to that of private military contractors; the token Earth Government of _AC2_ and _Another Age_ rose to the fore as the classic - almost archetypal - underdog success story so indelibly inscribed upon our American psyche, finding in the reimagined conflict its _raison d'__ê__tre_. The further I went, the more cohesively the elements knit together, frequently developing in unexpected directions to reveal facets that I'd never before considered, but which added further nuance to a world that I've come to know and love over the course of the painstaking effort to explore it.

Though _Geist_ may often, in consequence of its focus on the war raging along the Silent Line, shade toward the realm of military science fiction, such has never been the spirit in which it is written, and those few brave, patient, or foolish enough to hazard even the first character break or two would likely be unsurprised to learn that history is one of my foremost passions. The story which I've endeavored to tell, thus, is that of a living, breathing world whose existence reaches back farther than the figurative day before yesterday, and one which, for all its fictive trappings, is more like to our own than not - a world in which male conversation still gravitates toward sports, cars, and women; in which teenage girls, then as now, gossip and giggle over their latest amorous infatuation; in which men and women work forty-hour weeks, living for the stroke of five on Friday and idly dreaming of one day slipping the monotony of their quotidian routines; and in which ordinary people are, just occasionally, capable of extraordinary things.

By the same token, I've striven to navigate as deftly as I could the hazards endemic to most Armored Core fanfiction, sidestepping the traditional pitfalls as I've been able to identify them. The Armored Cores themselves, though necessarily a prominent fixture of almost any AC tale, I wanted to fit _into_ the world under construction, rather than shaping _it_ around _them_, and have accordingly tried to divest them of as much of the patently absurd as possible. Rather than the 'be-all, end-all tool of modern warfare' as which the games portray them, I've done my best to envision them instead as something akin to a modern expression of the basic cavalry concept - fast, agile, and undeniably effective in their element, but at their best when working in tandem with heavier ground forces. Above all, I've been at pains to balance their innate appeal - that potent distillation of the outcast motif that strikes a chord with the ronin and the rebel in all of us - against the limitations requisite to _any_ story worth telling, as there is little so narratively wearisome as a character (for, are the Armored Cores not, after their own fashion, characters unto themselves?) that can do anything, go anywhere, and overcome every obstacle before them without danger or difficulty.

Similarly, though the names of familiar parts are incontrovertibly the bread and butter of the series - and frequently memorized with almost encyclopedic rigor - I've eschewed their mention almost entirely, naming one or two when I've had to, but otherwise preferring to rely on more conventional literary description to convey a rough sense of a given Armored Core's aesthetic; all too often works of AC fanfiction devolve into little more than part manifests with a bit of prose attached as a belated afterthought, which trap I've done my best to avoid. (That said, one might argue - not unjustly - that my own writing is little more than historical exposition with bits of _dialogue_ thrown in as an afterthought.) A great deal of technology and terminology - both real and created for the story itself - I have likewise explained little or not at all, as I've always preferred the satisfaction of puzzling such things out for myself; raising that to a general principle, I suspect that _most_ of the Armored Core faithful in fact operate well above the average level, intelligent individuals whom I need not patronize or insult by holding their hand through an explication of details that they're perfectly able - and might well prefer - to work out on their own.

All told, this world - a curious hybrid of From Software's basic premise and my own imagination, and frequently emerging as something more than the sum of both - has at numerous turns taken on a life of its own, and has proven a true delight to create. And though I have written first and foremost for myself - for, what author does not? - I commend the work to my fellow Armored Core fans in the hope that they might find in _Geist_ some small measure of the immense satisfaction that I've known in writing it.

**A****CKNOWLEDGMENTS**

However humble this work, there are a number of people without whom it would neither have come as far nor assumed the shape that it has, and they surely deserve their due: my friend 'Ace', who has consistently provided an audience as dedicated as it is small, and that much more motivation to carry the story to completion in spite of the blank walls that I've hit from time to time; my friend 'Pathrifter', whose insights into the world of Layered have proven nothing short of invaluable, and who was good enough to permit me the use of the conlang that, although put together for an unrelated project, seemed almost tailor-made for Yui's tale; my sister, whose company and authorial dedication have both kept me writing; the dev team at From Software which, whatever my other complaints, set in place the world wherein I play so delightedly; and last but never, ever least, the cavalcade of professional authors whose work I've so greatly admired, and from whom I've learned so much more than any self-important English class could ever impart - Edward Gibbon, Karen Travess, Mary Shelley, Timothy Zahn, Stephen Baxter, Robert Jordan, Joseph Wright, Matthew Stover, James Bryce, and a great many more.


	2. Part One: Reconnaissance by Fire

_C__ORVUS __C__ORAX_

The common raven was a remarkable creature, when one got right down to it. The cliché for over a century after man split the atom was always that cockroaches would be the species to survive, if opposing nuclear powers ever went to war. And it made sense, really - they were practically ubiquitous across the globe, and seemed to thrive in almost any place imaginable outside of the Arctic or Antarctic; it was a natural and logical assumption that they would be the _real_ winners if the atomic balloon ever went up.

But that was before it actually happened.

Like the majority of the most horrific events in history, the Great Destruction was staggeringly obvious in its coming - and, therefore, missed all the more entirely by those best positioned to anticipate it. Almost before anyone realized what was happening, the proverbial lines had been drawn in the perhaps more proverbial sand, very much in the manner of a curious conflict that had been known as the 'Cold War', even though it was often anything but; had the world's blind and headlong flight toward the brink taken on a less break-neck pace, more people might have stopped to wonder at the similarity. History was nothing if not consistent, and rarely was it very innovative.

But along with that perpetual truth went an important, oft-overlooked corollary that few ever managed to grasp: while it had almost never shown itself terribly inventive, history _had_ always proven quite adept at one-upping itself.

Hence, the aptly- (if simply-) named 'Great Destruction'. It was hardly anything new at all, in principle, and largely a story as old as urban civilization; but its scale - _that_ was unprecedented in the sum total of recorded human knowledge. Devastation to degrees unthinkable two or three centuries before was the order of the day by the waning years of the war, and had mankind not been locked in mortal struggle with its most ancient of inner demons, it might have recoiled in horror at what it had wrought.

Conscience and morality were typically the first casualties of a battle for one's very survival, however, which was at least as true for nations and governments.

And more than that, there came a point, though neither spoken nor consciously acknowledged on any side, beyond which there _was_ no turning back; too much blood had been shed, and too many lives had been lost to do anything but see it through to the end, paradoxical though it might have seemed to later generations.

And so mankind imploded. Seas boiled and land burned as a species polarized like never before hurled back and forth the most terrible and wickedly creative products of its vast, boundless imagination. The Earth would never again be the same, irrevocably altered both cosmetically and in more substantive ways by the apocalyptic fury that the last nations spent on one another.

But some things endured - the raven, incredibly, among them. Two centuries huddling in the shelter that subterranean life provided from the consequences raging up above had left a large gap in human knowledge of the world's goings-on during that time; but upon Emerging at Exile's end it became apparent that entirely unforeseen and (in some cases) almost inexplicable fragments of the former eco system had miraculously remained intact, somehow coalescing into a new natural order every bit as vital as - if more precariously balanced than - the old.

GILT RIVIN

Such was, of course, all completely and utterly lost on the small black bird perched atop _Blue Asgard's_ rock-still shoulder. It had no idea of the fierce debate that it had engendered among ornithologists for the past fourteen years, nor could it, naturally, even fathom such things. Its sole concerns were those most basic in nature, and shared by every living thing - nourishment, shelter, and propagation, all of which it would seek wherever it could.

Perhaps that was the reason it had succeeded where other species failed, Gilt mused idly as he scanned the landscape displayed on the cockpit's wrap-around viewscreens; he was a pilot, not a zoölogist, but it seemed to him that at least a very many of the animals that had survived the turmoil of the Last War were in some way or another avid opportunists. Indeed, despite the quasi-stigma that had grown around them throughout history because of it, ravens were really little more than unfairly vilified pragmatists.

And maybe, he considered further, therein lay the answer to his periodic wonderings about why in the infernal depths of _hell_ his most famous and accomplished of mercenary groups had been named after an altogether average bird. For what was a mercenary, at the end of the day, if not pragmatic? That was how they'd made their living since time more or less immemorial, and the comparison built into the shared name actually struck him as unexpectedly apt, now that he thought about it more.

But in response to this minor epiphany his tiny companion only shook out its feathers and began preening itself unconcernedly.

_We should all lead such simple lives_, he thought somewhat wistfully, returning from his momentary distraction to the task at hand. Not a living thing aside from the raven moved in the empty, if (starkly) scenic, expanse around their tiny, eclectic group, but letting one's attention slip could be dangerous out here, even fatal. Attacks near the Silent Line came without warning, and often with no particular rhyme or reason - even after two years of unremitting war, the Earth Government Defense Force's intelligence sections still had trouble predicting whether it would be a major city or isolated utility shed that was hit next. Not that it was any serious failing of theirs - the pattern to the attacks, if one could even be said to exist, simply made no damned sense.

But then, that summed up the entirety of the conflict dishearteningly well. For twelve years after E-Day man had enjoyed renewed dominance on his native surface, finding things, if not exactly as they once were - and who alive could remember that anyway? - then at least fresh, and full of possibility. The man-made cataclysm that had brought the Christian era to a hellish close had spared little, by the end, but with just under two hundred years for the wounds therefrom to heal the effect was an almost complete wiping clean of the proverbial slate. Everything old was new again, as the archaic saying went, and the virginal frontiers of _der neue Kontinent_ - what it had been pre-Destruction was a matter of some contention, and it in fact went by several names, but _Neue_ was the least controversial - lay open to anyone with the drive and means to plumb their untold reaches.

The myriad corporations that had risen to dominance during the long exile underground, certainly, needed no encouragement; they would seek profit wherever it was to be had, and were among the earliest to take the first, tentative steps out into the remade world. Progress was cautious, halting at the outset, but within the first year nearly a half dozen cities were in various states of construction across the great broad plain beneath which Layered lay situate; and, human nature being the indomitable creature that it was, that number inflated almost exponentially over the next eleven years, until the 'set-ward two-thirds of the continent looked almost as it must have in ages past, teeming with the busy activity of human existence. To look at some of the better-to-do cities, one who didn't know better would never guess that it had not always been so.

Then, as was inevitable in the case of all good things, the fitful renascence...came to an end.

Gilt cast a wary glance 'rise-ward as he rechecked his comm settings, making sure the channel was still nice and tight; 'Waylay', his partner and Bravo element for this particular CAP - though not aircraft _per se_, Armored Cores and Muscle Tracers both, flight-capable as they commonly were, had borrowed heavily against the centuries-old argot of traditional, fixed-wing air power - his partner for this particular combat 'air' patrol was about a dozen kilometers to the north and due to check in before long, and the best way to avoid any unwanted solicitors was not to advertise with stray wireless signals. Not that they were absolutely sure the...enemy...was necessarily attracted by such things, but there was ample evidence to suggest that it probably was, and it didn't pay to take foolish chances.

The truth of the matter was, though, no one really understood _why_ they attacked, or what their motivations were - as far as that went, no two people were likely to agree on who or what they even were. The most anyone was much sure of was that the attacks had begun two years earlier, without warning or provocation, sometime in the early morning hours of just-winding down E-Day festivities.

Not that anyone had known it, at the time. Happily spent party-goers had stumbled back to their homes or slept off their earlier revelry in blissful ignorance - and when was ignorance anything but? - even as the first blow of the perplexing war to come was struck on the far 'rise-ward frontier. The world at large knew nothing until the first sketchy reports the next day, but that morning the mid-sized city of Isuka, remarkable only in its position farther 'rise-ward than any other at the time, was obliterated in an assault as shockingly violent and thorough as it was evidently brief; the best BDA techs and experts from surrounding regions had later determined that the city was effectively 'neutralized', as their antiseptic terminology phrased it, within an hour or so, two at most. Not since the Great Destruction itself had that level of...well, destruction been seen.

Corporate fingers were leveled at rivals almost faster than the story could cross the airwaves and hardlines, each blaming another for the tragedy and demanding reparations, the dismantling of their company, or their heads; tempers and tensions flared, and another attack just over a week later pushed the entire conflagration-in-waiting toward a dangerous flashpoint. If not for the Herculean diplomatic efforts of the small - and at that point still largely token - Earth Government, the entire continent on the Blue Side of the 'Line might have been plunged into a bloody internecine war. As it was, the first months of the _Geisteskrieg_ - as it was soon commonly known - were a stay in Pandemonium itself, as 'rise-ward attacks mounted with hardly a sign or clue as to who the mysterious aggressor was; that an effective and cohesive defense had eventually been effected was nothing short of a small miracle.

Now, though, two years later, even the fractious corporations had managed to set aside most of their petty rivalries - or at least mute them somewhat - and rally behind the banner and common cause of the resurgent Earth Government, which had risen to the call in an amazing display of leadership utterly belying its flimsy, theretofore inconsequential existence. Originally a fairly minor institution instated with the sole purpose of returning humanity to the Surface, it was now almost as strong and vital as the long-extinct, pre-Destruction nations had been in their glory days, and wielded considerable power and influence in fact as well as name.

There was that curious knack history had for repeating itself, Gilt supposed; strong centralized governments had risen once before - albeit in fits and starts - out of the nomadic indifference of wandering tribes and bands, and he saw little reason to suppose that it couldn't happen again. He wondered if EarthGov might not try its hand at bringing the companies to heel, and putting an end to their incessant warring, once the present conflict was over.

But that was straying into the uncertain realm of the future, the prediction of which Gilt studiously avoided. Better to leave that to the para-religious crackpots and their ilk, who'd been coming out of the damned metalwork since even before the radioactive dust of the Great Destruction had settled.

Besides, that was neither here nor there, and there was a job to do. A small flashing icon in the corner of the heads-forward display marked an incoming transmission; his wingman seemed to agree. 'What's the good word, "Waylay"?' Gilt asked, accepting the hail with a tap to the comm panel.

'Lyssa and I are having fantastic sex,' came the prompt reply; Gilt laughed.

'I suppose that _does_ qualify as good news, but I was more specifically referring to your end of the patrol.'

'Oh,' 'Waylay' said, feigning disappointment, 'well if _that's_ all you wanna talk about...' His voice turned slightly more serious. 'No, it's all quiet out here; I haven't seen anything since we left Outpoint.' That had been early that morning - what _was_ it with military operations and inhumanly early hours, anyway? - when their own wave of the never-ending CAP's had left Outpoint Station, currently the farthest flung of the numerous Defense Force outposts and stations that maintained a vigilant watch over the 'Line. 'You don't sound like you've had a lot of excitement either.'

'I think I made a friend,' Gilt said lightly, glancing out the side viewscreen at the raven, 'but other than that there's nothing out here worth mentioning. Head to the next waypoint - we're all done here.' Though theirs had left with the other routine patrols, this particular one was a bit different.

Conventional military wisdom held that a given force should, ideally, never cede the initiative, but rather force its opponent to react to its own maneuvers, and thereby control the prosecution of the conflict in question. Thus put on the defensive, a foe would perforce become easier to anticipate in their responses, many of which would be dictated by dint of simple military logic - a drive on his supply lines, accordingly, would elicit from any sane commander a swift and forceful response; a famous Corsican had once observed that an army moved on its stomach, which prescript had been understood as a key fundament of waging war by every competent general from Sargon the Great to William Sherman and beyond.

Such pearls of wisdom, however, were founded on the crucial - and in this case erroneous - assumption that the location and disposition of one's enemy were in fact deducible. _Geist_ attacks, mimicking in microcosm the _blitzkrieg_ of the Third Reich during the Second World War, began and ended with breath-taking celerity, and were so finely in tune with gaps in satellite coverage that all attempts to track their movements had so far proven maddeningly fruitless.

Where satellites and signals analysis had failed, it had early on been hoped that the Mark 1 human eyeball might succeed. The most innocuous reconnaissance craft that EarthGov Eastern Command could field were launched into ghost country with the simple objective of finding whatever they could, first at night, then at every hour on the clock in an increasingly frustrated attempt to exploit their phantom adversary's presumed circadian rhythms. Once it became clear that such had yielded no more than SAT- and SIGAN had, the order had been given to dispatch small recon teams, groups of two or three dropped at the nebulous edge of the 'Line with no more advanced a means of locomotion than their own two legs. Literally hiking through miles of high desert, and carrying the best man-portable surveillance gear in the corporate inventory - in their perpetual struggle for dominance during man's long sojourn beneath the Surface, corporations had honed industrial espionage to a keen and lethal point - the teams were for all intents and purposes invisible, and, it was theorized, far less likely to provoke a response.

Yet their efforts, too, came to nothing. Whether the teams had run afoul of a _Geist_ patrols, died of exposure, or been abducted by alien survey vessels, no one knew; all that could be said for certain was that they simply never returned, and whatever the reason, threat dossiers on _Geist_ forces remained as anorexic as they had been at war's onset. It was clear that theirs was a sophisticated and competent adversary, but who - or what - the _Geister_ were, or where they even came from, remained dark to EarthGov and corporate intelligence arms alike.

Then, not two weeks gone, a potential solution to their so-far intractable problem had appeared in an unlikely quarter. Bryas Toane, a mid-level analyst stationed at EastCOM Home, had hazarded the suggestion that, instead of the surreptitious insertion of under-armed forces beyond the 'Line - which efforts had, to date, been a resounding failure - more conspicuous incursions be launched with the express purpose of drawing the _Geister_ out, and gauging their capabilities and response time via direct combat. Gilt had heard some of the Soldiers speak of 'reconnaissance by fire', of which concept the Toane Initiative sounded like a logical outgrowth. Weary of spending two years on the defensive, EastCOM Home had given the go-ahead and duly sent its orders to the various forward bases on the 'Line, where they were met with no small measure of enthusiasm; the S-2 whiz kids were tired of ramming their heads into the same unassailable brick walls, and had been clamoring for new intelligence for some time.

Accordingly, Gilt and 'Waylay' - whose affirmative double comm click indicated he was already speeding off to his next assigned position - comprised Outpoint's probing element, and were presently well beyond the boundaries of its usual AOR with orders to move still farther 'rise-ward before day's end. As part of the first stage of EastCOM's new operational disposition, their task was, in effect, to see how far they could go before 'Gus' caught wind of their movements; radio silence was to be maintained as per usual, lest they tip EastCOM's hand, but the two Ravens were otherwise meant to range out beyond the line in as relatively brazen and blithe a fashion as they pleased.

The pages of Toane's report had blandly outlined a 'compact, well-armed, highly mobile, and reasonably autonomous' Table of Organization and Equipment for the incursive force, which, for anyone with a slip of military experience - be it governmental, corporate, or 'diplomatic', as some Ravens fancied theirs - could not have more plainly called for the Ravens to spearhead the initiative. Gilt had leafed through a couple of Toane's other analytics out of mild curiosity, and in each a frank and forthright man typically emerged; the circumspect tone of his latest struck Gilt as uncharacteristic, and suggested that Toane was likely toeing a line with one or more of his superiors.

For, as the more vulturous media outlets loved to overdramatize, it was no secret that Ravens did not always integrate with military life on the Silent Line as well as their corporate counterparts. Their combat record in the war was all but unmatched; the razor-sharp reflexes and healthy dose of paranoia which they wore like a second skin in the tumultuous world of corporate 'dispute mediation' served Ravens remarkably well in ghost country, where attacks were generally initiated without either mercy or preamble. Yet the friction resultant of the ineluctable culture-clash between mercenary and G.I. sometimes flared into open dissension, and in three instances had terminated with the stormy departure outright of a Raven from their post.

If the corporate mentality often ran toward the headstrong and fractious, then on average Ravens were willfully and obdurately independent, lone wolves by both nature and necessity who, as a rule, put little stock in the self-important squawking that the military fancied 'leadership'; for their part, there were a large number of military commanders who regarded Ravens as undisciplined and inconstant opportunists, no more than pirates with loosely official sanction.

Yet it was precisely such qualities, however characterized, that rendered the Raven a custom fit for the force which Toane prescribed. Whatever their complaints to one another about the typical paucity of mission support from their clients, it was a point of personal and professional pride that Ravens were accustomed to often protracted operation with little or no back-up, and intelligence that was, like as not, patently fallacious. Experience taught them to rely only on themselves, their AC's, and their Operators, their own holy trinity beyond which trust became a ruinous liability. If it was self-sufficiency that Toane had envisioned when he had penned his report, he would find it in spades in the Raven Order.

Of course, that was not to say that it was without its share of idealists. If they tended to share certain traits, then Ravens were still as diverse a lot as any, and the truth was that their service in ghost country was strictly voluntary - if a Raven chose to put his life on the 'Line, it was probably because he believed in the cause, to some greater or lesser degree. Absent a clear - or even hazy - picture of his intentions, no one could say for sure how far 'set-ward Gus might push, but few were willing to gamble man's fledgling Surface beachhead on his good graces. The mass exodus following the end of the Controller's reign had deposited better than half the population of Layered on the surface over the first decade, which meant that the Interior - generally speaking the broad swath of the _Neue_ continent that stretched from the Silent Line to the more heavily peopled 'set-ward coast - was now home to the lion's share of what remained of humanity. Naturally, no one knew how many people there might be wherever the _Geister_ called home, but they clearly weren't interested in talking.

In the chaotic early weeks of the war, as EarthGov's meager military was moved onto its best impression of a war footing, the airwaves had hummed with diplomatic transmissions, all streaming 'rise-ward and proclaiming its peaceful intentions in a vain attempt to make contact. Just in case Gus didn't speak English or German, which had early on come to the fore as Layered's twin _linguae francae_, each message had been translated into every other language that had survived the stay underground - and there were pitiably few - but none seemed to work. They either didn't understand on the other side, or, more probably, they didn't care. Regardless, as it became increasingly apparent that the war had only two outcomes, and the Earth Government began its remarkable metamorphosis from token vestige to viable threat, what military resources there were to be had were mobilized and stationed at critical locations on the 'Line. For his own part Gilt was relieved to see them fighting back more aggressively; in the beginning the war was necessarily defensive, but necessity had become habit, which in turn had begun ossifying into something akin to policy. It was sound enough military practice to avoid marching into unknown territory against an unknown foe, but intelligence-gathering efforts had so far come to just a touch less than nothing, and few save the Byzantines had ever managed to successfully weather purely defensive wars. It would be good to start turning the tables, and maybe put a little pressure on Gus for a change.

_Not that it looks like he'll coöperate today,_ Gilt decided as _Blue Asgard_'s handsome form rose from the awkward prone position she had maintained for the past hour; the raven squawked indignantly and flapped off to find another, less flighty perch as the angular Armored Core - though she made ample use of Mirage components as well, her lines were undeniably Crest - moved off at a serviceable trot.

It was odd, though, that neither he nor his more junior partner had encountered so much as a sensor ghost this far out; installations were hit almost daily along the 'Line, and to be so audacious as to cross it was to invite almost certain attack. At least, that had always been the case in the past; now Gilt fought the most likely over-optimistic urge to think that they might have found that ever-important chink in the enemy's armor, a blind spot where their surveillance was not quite up to par with the rest.

_Or maybe they're testing_ us_ too_, he thought more pessimistically. _That_ notion entailed all manner of unseemly possibilities, however, not the least of which was that he and 'Waylay' might well never see another sunrise. _If they've tracked us from Outpoint, and know the route we took out here..._

But that didn't bear thinking on, and he shook his head to scatter the gloomy line of thought. For now it was enough that they hadn't run into any trouble, and they could worry about it if or when they did. Gilt knew that he came nowhere close to the skills that some of the more famous Ravens had put on display in their time, but he and _Blue Asgard_ worked together like a well-oiled machine, and he was quite certain that he was at least good enough to make one terrific fuss for any _Geister_ who thought to take advantage of an ostensibly hapless AC in their territory. They might well take him down someday, but he would make _damn_ sure that they wouldn't like it.

TYRE deLESNE

As _Operator's_ deceptively lithe frame trotted along toward his objective, deLesne's eyes drifted again from their sweep of the countryside to the photo taped up in a convenient corner of the cockpit.

_Surface Above_ but Lyssa was beautiful; even now, thinking back, he still wasn't quite sure how he'd landed her. She seemed wholly out of place in the noisy, crowded little sprawl of Outpoint, and looked more like she belonged in one of the big, glitzy cities of the Interior; nor would he ever have expected to share so many interests with someone who looked like she did - he'd swear she could have come straight off a movie poster.

He shook his head abruptly to clear it; distractions were dangerous out here, 'Gai' had told him his first day on the front, and could all too easily get one killed. He hadn't been lying, either - deLesne had seen it borne out firsthand not half a month later, as first the terminally-arrogant 'Corpse Maker', and then his similarly pretentious and bull-headed cohort 'Apophis', were killed as a result of their foolish antics on the battlefield. Which loss bothered him little, he had to admit, but for the lives of the younger, greener Raven that those two had nearly cost them.

It didn't pay to take needless risks out here in _Geistland_, though, and deLesne made a conscious effort to keep his eyes and thoughts from straying to the coquettishly-smiling young woman with whose visage he shared his cockpit.

But, conveniently enough, the next waypoint of his half of the mission was just ahead, and he slowed _Operator_ as he searched the immediate area for a reasonable bit of concealment. Hiding a thirteen meter AC was no mean feat, usually, but covered in dust and grass stains as he was, _Operator_ blended into the landscape surprisingly well.

Tyre chuckled ruefully at the memory that brought to mind of his first days at Outpoint, and how proudly fastidious he had been in keeping up _Operator's_ appearance. He'd sprayed the machine down and then scrubbed away with the specially long brushes designed for such things, working for hours to keep him looking assembly line-new, and growing frustrated when the dust kicked up by the endless bustle of outgoing and incoming CAPs, passing trucks and jeeps and transports, and even Soldiers drilling would drift over to lay down a fresh coat of dirt on his hard work. It wasn't until Gilt had taken him aside later in the week that he'd understood the quiet laughter of some of the older veterans as they passed. 'Keep the joints and sensor windows clean, definitely,' he'd told him, 'but don't worry about the rest. All that dust and dirt you pick up out there will help you blend in, and it's cheaper than paint.' Now _Operator_ bore his makeshift camouflage proudly - even handsomely, deLesne thought - and it was easy to tell by their respective mounts who'd been in-country for a while and who hadn't.

As _Operator_ lay prone and the cockpit tipped forward to leave him half dangling, deLesne hit the comm and raised Gilt.

'Yeah, go ahead, "Waylay".'

'I'm in position, "Gai",' he reported. 'Still nothing to see but lots of nature.'

'Roger that, same here.' A pause. Then: 'listen, this is as far as we're supposed to go, and we haven't seen so much as a glint off metal today, but keep alert.' deLesne hadn't known him all that long or well, but something in Gilt's voice sounded just a bit off.

'Everything okay, bossman?' he asked, borrowing the nickname he'd heard EarthGov Soldiers use on occasion.

'It is for now,' his partner answered non-committally. 'Just stay sharp.' The channel closed, returning to its standby status to await future transmissions.

_Weird_, deLesne thought, settling into the by-now familiar quirks of his slightly disorienting lookout position. For, though he was effectively looking straight down, the perspective on his view screens was that of _Operator_ himself, whose head was oriented for a somewhat more useful vantage. _Is it just me, or does Gilt seem a little tense..?_

But he shrugged his concern away to the back of his mind; if 'Gai' said everything was all right, then everything was all right.

GILT RIVIN

Something was wrong.

Force of habit made Gilt glance to his sensor readout, but he shook his head in mild irritation at the wasted effort. Not for the first time he distantly wished for some way to boost the range of _Blue Asgard_'s on-board radar - here in _Geistland_'s high desert, three hundred sixty meters was near to worthless. He could see to the _horizon_ in most places - on average nearly thirteen kilometers away, from his in-cockpit perspective - with the surrounding land broken up, as it was, by only the occasional low hills, scattered trees, and some tenacious bushes.

But if wishes were MT's, beggars would ride; his wits and sharp eyes would have to suffice, as they always had before.

However, the uneasy feeling remained; even _Blue Asgard_ seemed tense, wary of the hostile country around her.

Maybe it was just their close proximity to the shattered ruin of Isuka, a scant handful of kilometers distant, that had him on edge, but he didn't think so. Gilt had never been a superstitious man, nor was he prone to flights of fancy, and at most the dead city only heightened his sense of unease. Something felt...off, out of place.

But while he trusted his instincts implicitly, he had nothing lanicrete to show anyone else, and saw no point in needlessly worrying Tyre. _Not yet, anyway._ On a sudden thought he reached for the comm panel again, then stopped, hand hovering a few centimeters above the interface. He could raise Lihnea, see about sneaking in a look from whatever satellite surveillance might be available, but that was risky. As with so much about Gus, no one was really sure how much he knew of EastCOM positions on the 'Line, but SOP was to assume he knew everything, and guard information as though he knew nothing. A wireless transmission from that distance would be necessarily more powerful, therefore easier to trace, and very possibly for no appreciable gain.

Furthermore, there was no guarantee that there even _was_ a recon satellite overhead right now; the skies farthest above were perhaps more hotly contested than the Surface, filled with at least as many hunter-killer satellites as their more benign cousins, and the balance of power in that remote and remotely-managed theater seesawed almost daily. Gilt didn't like the idea of risking Outpoint's presumed secrecy on a hunch, especially when their eyes over the 'Line were unreliable at best.

So he resolved to wait, and watch. The designated Operator for this particular mission - Lihnea, in this case - was only to be contacted in the event of a genuine emergency, and he doubted Major Burke would agree that a Raven's 'bad feeling' constituted one such.

Besides, Tyre clearly hadn't seen anything amiss, or he would have radioed in. Gilt patted a console affectionately.

'Maybe we're just jumping at shadows, huh, baby?' But _Blue Asgard_ seemed not to relax in the slightest, to his mind, and nor did he; the feeling persisted.

After an interminable half hour of increasing anxiety, the tension became nearly unbearable: something _was_ wrong, even if he couldn't put a finger on it. That ineffable, wholly ephemeral yet distinctly palpable feeling at the back of his mind hadn't gone away, and had in fact only grown. It was time to go.

With deft and practiced skill he raised _Blue Asgard_ from her erstwhile hiding place and hailed Tyre as he set off for his position at a near-run.

' "Waylay", don't mind the big blue 'Core coming your way,' he announced without preamble, 'we're just going over the say "hello". I would appreciate it mightily if you didn't fill us full of holes.' That evoked an uneasy laugh from the other end of the line.

'Sure thing, highspeed - but why the visit? Aren't we supposed to stay here for a while yet?'

Gilt frowned beneath his visor as he considered how to answer; finally, he settled on the unpadded truth. 'Something's not right,' he said simply. 'I don't know about you, but the feel is all wrong down here - I'm moving to link up with you, and should be there in a few minutes.' Their dozen-or-so kilometer separation stipulated by the mission outline was nominally a compromise between allowing them to cover more ground while still remaining close enough to support each other in the event of enemy contact, but the creeping sensation between his shoulder blades urged Gilt to pair up now, rather than waiting for something to happen. On level terrain at a dead run, _Blue Asgard_ could cover twelve kilometers in half as many minutes, in fewer if he put to use her impressive thruster banks - in lieu of the weapons customarily fitted to an AC's back Gilt had opted to augment her already potent FLEET's with Mirage's supplementary WAKE boosters, and operating in fiery tandem they lent her an output that was second to none - but even that could be an eternity if Tyre found himself in an untenable position or situation. 'Once I'm there we'll take off, but we're going to swing by Isuka on the way back.'

'Whoa.' He could almost hear Tyre's eyes go wide. 'We're that close to it? Where is it?'

'Not five miles north of you, as the crow flies.'

'What the hell is a "mile"?' Tyre demanded lightly, Isuka momentarily forgotten; Gilt allowed a small, amused smile.

'Sorry, I sometimes forget in whose presence I babble; it's an archaic unit of measurement that didn't quite survive the Great Destruction.' And no small wonder, given how clunky the entire measuring system had been.

'Huh.'

'In any case,' Gilt continued on, 'as you might or might not have guessed we're right on top of where the old 'Line was.' Not that it had stayed out that far for very long; Isuka's founders had struck their claim well beyond anything else that had been established then or since, and with its fall there was simply nothing in between to hold on _to_. It wasn't exactly a secret, but nor was it common knowledge; for understandable reasons the EastCOM general staff preferred not to advertise the loss in territory, however unavoidable.

'How about that...' Tyre replied, half to himself. 'They never told us anything about that - how'd _you_ find out about it?'

'I read too much, mainly,' came the half-joking answer. 'Or that's what Lihnea says, at least.' She was always playfully on his case about how much time he spent with his nose buried in books. 'But I want to check the place out before we leave - might as well, while we're here. We're effectively done anyway; it doesn't look like Gus is going to play ball today.'

'Fine by me, boss.'

'We should be popping up on your scopes in a couple of minutes - keep a candle burning in the window for us.'

TYRE deLESNE

As promised, the wait was brief. Even before she came within range of _Operator's_ impressive sensors, Tyre spotted _Blue Asgard_'s wavy, heat-distorted form loping through the afternoon sunlight toward his temporary post. Within another couple of minutes she was jogging by in the deliberate, unmistakably mechanical gait characteristic of nearly all humanoid 'Cores, and _Operator_ took up the customary wingman's spot a few hundred meters to her left. The near half-kilometer between them often struck civilians and the otherwise uninitiated as excessive, but not many outside the ranks of the Ravens themselves had a good handle on just how quickly an Armored Core could move, or how far their weapons could reach. Especially in such open country as this, both evasive and offensive maneuvers were likely to be wide and sweeping, and indeed, even that distance was not much of a buffer - if both machines were to light off their thrusters and skim toward each other by mistake, their closing speed could climb as high as seven hundred kilometers per hour or more. But that was why Ravens trained hard and often with their individual mounts, frequently spending more time in the cockpit than out, until they knew them like they knew their own bodies. Tyre was new to the front, perhaps, but had been a Raven for far longer, and Gilt had been at both for longer still - neither would make so amateurish a mistake as to career into one another.

And frankly, Tyre was just as pleased to finally be at a sensible support distance, rather than that twelve klick bullshit that Outpoint's S-3 shop had dreamed up for the mission. He had been sure that Gilt thought it ridiculous too, and was accordingly surprised to be quickly silenced by the older man when he began to protest.

But it wasn't worth the bother, he'd been told later, once outside and in the relative privacy of the massive garage that housed their trademark machines.

'It's a comparatively minor detail,' Gilt had said - ' we can change that kind of thing on the fly and in the field, if need be, without the Ops kids looking over our shoulders. Well,' he'd amended with a sly grin, 'they might be watching the ADR scopes, but there's nothing they can do about it once we're out in ghost country, now is there. They're a good bunch, mind you,' he'd hastened to add, 'and their hearts are in the right place, but they can get twitchy about some things, and you have to pick your battles.'

That had made sense enough to Tyre, and he took the lesson to heart as he did with most such bits of advice from the veterans at Outpoint; he figured that anyone who'd survived for any meaningful length of time on the 'Line must have at least some idea of what they were talking about, and probably bore listening to.

His new partner was one such, he thought, casting a glance off 'rise-ward where _Blue Asgard_ ran along in her easy, mechanical way. Gilt spoke of himself little, but there was a certain, indefinable, war-weary manner about him, and Tyre was sure he'd been there longer than almost anyone else, maybe even since the beginning. But if that was the case, he didn't know what had kept the man going for the past two years; though no one really talked about it, life out here was a tenuous thing, and death could come calling at any time. Wise commanders were relatively generous with liberties and leaves for the people under them, and as a rule any given man or woman would be rotated back to wherever they called home after a six month tour, circumstances permitting.

The Ravens, on the other hand, were a bit freer in their comings and goings. Most had contracts neatly laying out the terms of their services, naturally - EastCOM couldn't have its assets vanishing into the night with no warning - but their employment was, in fact if not in name, on an at-will basis; if a Raven decided to pull up stakes and go home, there was precious little that most commanders could do to stop them. The more obstinate might try to detain them by force, marshalling the often considerable firepower at their disposal to bring the 'deserter' to heel - in some cases, they might even succeed. But G.I. and mercenary both knew that the former would pay dearly in the attempt, and cooler heads would most probably opt to let them go without incident, preserving the remainder of their resources for more important battles.

And, of course, that was only a worst case scenario. If Ravens still were not fully trusted in most quarters, they were, at the least, the enemy of the enemy; however chilly relations between _Soldat_ and _Söldner_ sometimes were - although Tyre himself got on rather well with the military Outpointers - each knew that the other was as intent upon stopping Gus as they were. Beyond that, the Ravens were paid more or less monthly, and were free to leave at any time - with the simple understanding that remuneration for their services would be withheld if they left their post before the pay cycle had ended.

Gilt, however, was a different story, Tyre was almost certain. He couldn't say why he thought so, exactly, but he'd swear that the man was there for the duration, come hell or high water. Maybe it was the quiet zeal with which he went about his work - he seemed to have a genuine _passion_ for what he did, for the cause that the renascent Earth Government had championed over the preceding two years. But then again, that seemed decidedly out of place for a putative mercenary; Tyre wasn't quite sure what to make of the man, when he got right down to it.

Almost as if sensing the direction of his thoughts, Gilt chose that moment to interrupt them with a short hail. 'If you have an eye or interest for history, you may want to take a look at what's ahead.' _Blue Asgard_'s right arm gestured helpfully, in a surprising imitation of the human motion; Tyre peered into the artificial distance of his forward viewscreen, squinting instinctively for a better look before remembering the various enhancement subroutines and capabilities at his disposal. He zoomed in a bit for a clearer view.

Emerging from behind a short run of the region's ubiquitous low hills, just a klick or so to the north, a small city could now be seen, its jagged and oddly-angled buildings standing out sharply amidst the at-turns smoother and much more irregular lines of the land around it. Of course, it had not always been so; upon closer inspection it was evident that the city's borders had once extended much farther than they did now, though only the telltale straight lines of roads and foundations served as silent reminders of what once had been. Most buildings were gone, long toppled to be reclaimed by the harsh and unforgiving elements native to the area, but a few had survived, if it could be called that, and bore stoic witness to the violence visited upon the hapless outpost. It had been as brutal as it had been efficient and methodical, with load-bearing structures targeted almost to the exclusion of all else; most buildings had collapsed or burned to the ground, but a few remained that had not quite given up the architectural ghost yet, leaning crazily at angles they were never meant to accommodate.

Tyre felt just a touch numb as he took in the wanton destruction. 'That's..?'

'Isuka,' Gilt confirmed quietly, as they reached the former outskirts of the once-city; it was unnaturally still, and the very air hung over them heavily with oppressive silence. Both the Armored Cores slowed, almost of their own accord, as though they too felt the somber gravity of the place. 'This is where the war began.'

It felt to Tyre like there should have been a monument there, something to remind people of what had happened to foment the strange conflict that now raged along the 'Line.

Two hundred kilometers behind them. To 'set-ward.

He suddenly felt terribly and crushingly alone.

No living thing had set foot in the city for two years, and not a soul breathed within hundreds of kilometers. The closest friendly face was hours away, and at that moment seemed impossibly remote. The incalculable weight of the site pressed down upon him with suffocating force; his breath tightened in his chest.

Then Gilt broke the spell. 'Spooky, huh?' he said with almost uncharacteristic humor; the warm surety of his rock-solid presence flooded across the comm line, and Tyre almost gasped in relief at the reminder that his veteran partner was still there.

'Yeah,' he said simply, gratefully laughing off the remnants of whatever had settled over him moments before. 'Yeah, it kind of is.' He reached out to touch Lyssa's photo, drawing reassurance from her warm and mischievously alluring smile.

'Best then that we not spend too much time here, isn't it. Let's get going.' _Blue Asgard_ resumed her steady march along the shattered thoroughfares and avenues, untroubled by the havoc wrought around her; _Operator_ trailed behind, maintaining an escort position more befitting the closer confines of what had once been Isuka.

'Are we looking for anything in particular, boss, or just sightseeing?'

'Probably both,' Gilt answered somewhat cryptically. 'The cover here might be useful, too.'

'You think someone's going to come calling?' He didn't have to specify which 'someone' he meant.

'It's hard to say, out here,' 'Gai' said calmly - 'but keep your wits about you. There's no telling just how dead this place really is.' _Blue Asgard_ emphasized the point by drawing her ever-present machine gun from the impromptu 'holster' - little more than a glorified, retractable hook, really - that normally held it on her hip when not in battle, taking on an entirely new demeanor. Her pace seemed to have changed, subtly, from a casual almost-stroll to a more predatory and wary stalk. She was no longer simply sleek and handsome, but suddenly looked...dangerous.

But that was as good as a spoken order for Tyre to follow suit, and he flicked _Operator_ over to combat mode. The 'Core's sensor 'eyes' flared briefly, and the large-bore plasma rifle that comprised his primary armament came up to a low ready position. Tyre didn't know what to expect, exactly, this far from friendly lines, but Gilt's quiet, unassuming confidence was contagious; with the same conviction with which a child knew that Saint Klaus would come on Christmas, he knew that whatever might come, whatever the _Geister_ tried to throw at them, they would handle it.

LIHNEA TIHL

Lihnea sighed. It had been a long day.

She didn't so much mind the early hour at which Gilt's mission had kicked off; since girlhood she had been accustomed to getting up at or around dawn, and regularly rose well in advance of her Raven partner, whom she tried to let sleep for as long as possible out here.

That brought a wry quirk of a smile to her mouth. She _had_ to let him sleep as late as possible, most of the time, since the lead-headed fool was too stubborn to know when to rest; she'd once had to threaten to bodily _drag_ him to his bed, before he acquiesced. _Typical man_, the Operator thought with affectionate bemusement _-_ _they'll go to hell and back to save the world, but they can't even take care of themselves._

But no, Lihnea wasn't bothered by rising early - it was the mission itself that she found to be paradoxically wearying. Normally she would have been in constant contact, sending updates and pertinent information as she saw fit, and maybe trading a bit of friendly ribbing with Gilt - but with her two charges maintaining wireless silence, at least between them and Outpoint, there was little to do besides keep track of their respective Armored Core Data Relay signals. There were occasional other tasks with which she busied herself, like checking the spotty 'overhead imagery' (as the military personnel liked to call it) of Gilt's and Tyre's projected routes, but most of her time was spent maintaining stoic watch over the ADR console, which had reported more or less the same information for hours now. It was important, she knew, but it was hard to stay so focused on something so monotonous, and surprisingly taxing.

But Aya had kept her well-supplied with coffee, and was just now arriving with another steaming cup of her saving grace. 'This is the strongest stuff they have,' she told a grateful Lihnea as she handed the mug over. 'The stuff the Soldiers drink, apparently.' That was welcome news - EarthGov Soldiers were famous for, among other things, the paint-stripping coffee that most of their officers imbibed on a daily basis. If _that_ weren't enough to wake someone up, then they were probably dead.

'Thanks, Aya.' Lihnea took a careful sip, and tried to stretch some of the stiffness out of her slender limbs.

'No changes, huh?' As Tyres's Operator, Aya Wynn was technically on 'standby' for the purposes of their assignment, meant as a back-up in case...well, in case of what, Lihnea wasn't sure. The chances that the _Geister_ knew about Outpoint were slim, by her estimation, as they hadn't yet been spotted within fifty kilometers of it. Furthermore, the Command and Control center that was the heart of this and all other operations out of the station was located in a reinforced lanicrete bunker well underground; unless some _Geist_ aircraft showed up with surface-piercing warheads and the knowledge of precisely where to drop them - which she also thought unlikely - the AC ops carrel snugged into the diminutive C&C was about as safe a place as there was to be found on the 'Line. But the EGDF, as did militaries in general, liked having its contingencies in place, and so wanted Aya close at hand. There was little for her to do, but to her credit she made herself as useful as possible, seeming to dislike inactivity as much as Lihnea herself did. And, like any good Operator, she was concerned about her Raven, and kept her own watchful eye on the scopes.

'No,' Lihnea shook her head, the long brunette forelocks that framed her pretty face swaying as she did so. 'They're still playing in the dirt where we left-' She cut off as unexpected motion on the map display caught her eye. Frowning, she watched as _Blue Asgard_'s marker abruptly left its position and moved off to intercept _Operator's_. 'Well they were,' she amended half-distractedly, searching for whatever had prompted the course change, 'until Gilt decided to make me a liar.' But examining the map display was largely an exercise in futility, and she soon gave it up. Brighter lighting indicated places that they could monitor in real-time, and that faded out over one hundred kilometers behind the Raven pair; the only such bright patches to be found out that far surrounded the Armored Cores themselves, and extended only as far as their limited on-board sensors could see. There could have been an army just out of range, with Outpoint never the wiser.

'Weird that Tyre's still in place,' Aya said, leaning in closer. 'Wonder what spooked Gilt.'

Lihnea bristled slightly at that, unsure whether to take it as a back-handed insult to her Raven or not. Gilt most certainly did not 'spook', in any case, and she said as much. 'I'm sure he moved for good reason,' she stated evenly. 'He knows what he's doing.' Aya nodded absently, eyes still sizing up the ADR readouts, and Lihnea wondered if she'd maybe misinterpreted the earlier comment. She tended to be rather protective of Gilt, and bore any slight against the man as one against herself, but the offhand remark seemed to have been innocent enough.

'Well their weapons are still cold, so that's a good sign,' Aya pointed out; Lihnea had noted that as well, and nodded herself.

'If anything's _really_ wrong, they'll call us,' she said, squeezing the other woman's shoulder reassuringly. 'Gilt's one of the best pilots I've ever seen, even if he won't admit it, and Tyre's got a good head on his shoulders. I'm sure they'll be fine.'

But the minutes that passed as _Blue Asgard_'s azure contact made its way to _Operator's_ olive drab were tense, and both women watched the display like hawks. Then both markers were moving, resuming Gilt's northward march.

'Where the hell are they going?' Aya wondered aloud. 'Do you suppose their nav equipment's out..?' Though Gilt had left his early, they had nonetheless reached the mission's last assigned waypoint, and should have been heading back home by now, to 'set-ward. But Lihnea shook her head, forelocks gently swinging again.

'No, if that were the case they'd still have the sun to use to get their bearings.' The afternoon sun would be beating down mercilessly at this time, in fact, and in a fleeting stray thought Lihnea was glad to be underground in an air conditioned room. 'I think they're looking or heading for something specific...and something tells me it's Gilt's idea,' she finished wryly. He could be curious to a fault, which quirk had gotten him into trouble on more than one occasion. Though she wondered what could possibly be out there, in the trackless wastes of _Geistland's_ high desert.

Aya's eyes crinkled in momentary amusement. 'You sound like he gets you into trouble a lot,' she said, indicating the monitor with a tilt of her head. Lihnea smiled back and chuckled.

'He can, on occasion - you know how Ravens are.' This accompanied by a good-natured roll of her large brown eyes.

'They do keep life interesting,' Aya agreed, clearly recalling several misadventures of her own with Tyre. Then she grew more serious, and leaned back over the ADR console. 'I think ours've found something.'

Lihnea returned her attention to the display. It looked like they were standing in - she frowned as she looked closer at the screen - a city..? That was odd, she hadn't remembered anything being out that- _Oh._ Sudden realization dawned, a snippet of a conversation with Gilt that had swum abruptly out of her memory, and she began tapping quickly at one of the two keyboards set into the free-standing ADR station.

'What is it?' Aya asked, picking up on the subtle shift in her companion's mood; Lihnea pointed to the screen as a small symbol with a few vital statistics beside it popped up about where their Ravens were.

'Isuka,' she supplied. '_That_'s what Gilt wanted to check out, I'm sure.' He was nothing if not a lover of history, and if he was usually of the opinion that older was better, there was no way he could have passed up the chance to see something as historic as the first battleground of the war. _Men!_ Lihnea thought with an exasperated look skyward - they'd been worried over nothing more than the boyish curiosity that refused to loose its hold on her partner. A quick look the other woman's face showed that Aya's thoughts largely mirrored her own.

'Boys will be boys,' she shrugged resignedly. Lihnea nodded in agreement and continued her scrutiny of the various bits of data coming in. On a whim she brought up the video feed from _Blue Asgard_'s viewscreens, watching what Gilt himself saw.

'Surface Above...' Aya whispered beside her, all traces of their easy joking now vanished. The ruined Isuka spread out around _Blue Asgard_, a cruel parody of a city in the hard afternoon sunlight. 'I had no idea...' She seemed at a loss for words, as indeed Lihnea herself felt, staring at the heartless devastation. It was...horrible.

But she shook off her momentary shock, and resolutely took up the task at hand once more. The place made her feel uneasy, and she set to examining _Blue Asgard_'s ADR readouts with renewed vigil. She had the growing feeling that something wasn't quite right...

A ghostly sliver of red suddenly appeared on what, three hundred kilometers 'rise-ward, would be Gilt's sensor screen, a contact just at the edge of radar range. Lihnea's hand shot to the comm panel.

' "Gai"!'

GILT RIVIN

' "Gai"!' the comm erupted, Lihnea's voice overlaid atop Tyre's simultaneous transmission.

But he'd already seen it - been waiting for it, in fact - and even as the signals had come he kicked _Blue Asgard_ into motion. With the fury of an angry star her thrusters roared to life, and she swung out and away down a broad, open avenue. A flick of his eyes to the sensor readout confirmed that Tyre was on the move too, expertly seeking cover from the bluish-white energy bolts now angrily sizzling through the air. Good. The younger man was no fool, and seemed to know what he was about; but for all that he was new to the front, and had likely only read about their present adversary, if even that.

'Careful,' Gilt warned, 'the _Bären_ are a lot faster than they look.'

'And loaded for fucking bear,' Tyre noted sourly, unaware of his inadvertent pun, as four missiles detonated on the heels of a massive rifle grenade - though thankfully all where he _had_ been. 'What the hell are these things?' The end of his query was drowned by the terrific thunderclap of a nearby building, no longer willing to tolerate the new abuse hurled at it, that at last toppled over.

'_Geist_ AC?' Gilt suggested with a shrug. 'Now one's really-' He dodged reflexively at a near miss as _Blue Asgard_ hurtled down a street, eating up the distance between him and the _Bär_. 'No one's really sure,' he finished, throwing several bursts of machine gun fire downrange as he dodged behind an up-ended onramp. A few of them landed satisfyingly on the _Bär_'s center of mass, though it seemed to care little.

Towering a full head and shoulders above even the heaviest Armored Core chassis registered with the Ravens' Nests, the hulking _Bären_ which Gus periodically fielded were, to date, perhaps the most dangerous weapons in his phantasmic Table of Organization and Equipment after the satellite-to-surface weapons that prowled the orbital lanes above the 'Line, and periodically poured their wrath down upon the land. It was a given that, the larger the AC, the slower; by virtue of the most rudimentary physical laws, which even children grasped intuitively, larger, bulkier chassis were perforce limited to lower speeds than lighter models with comparable generator capacity and thruster output - the same force distributed across a greater mass was, in other words, productive of lesser acceleration. Simple math. But whatever infernal engines blazed at the heart of the _Bären_, they were evidently a generation or so ahead of the best tech on which either EarthGov or the corporations drew. _Geist_ 'Cores - they _looked_ like AC's, anyway, though Gilt couldn't be sure whether the underlying technology were truly of similar ancestry or not - boasted nigh bottomless capacitors, could move at velocities wholly unreasonable for their considerable bulk, and evinced reaction times that bordered on inhuman.

Oh, and they were armored like Surface-forsaken _tanks_. 'That plating isn't just for show, either,' Gilt told Tyre belatedly. 'That rifle of yours might get through, though.' As _Operator_ rounded the corner of half a building to unleash his own swarm of mid-sized missiles, _Blue Asgard_ rocketed to the top of another across the street and Gilt thumbed her Exceed Orbits to life, taking advantage of the _Bär_'s distraction; the small energy cannons popped out of their twin housings on the AC's back, and began pulsing away at the same moment that two of Tyre's missiles connected. The resulting explosion knocked the _Bär_ into the former skyscraper behind it, and several energy bolts lanced into its body as though to pin it in place.

But none of the others had died so easily either; even while it was regaining its balance, _Blue Asgard_ had hurled herself into the air and was now descending on the shell-shocked _Bär_ like an avenging angel, incandescent wings of blue-white plasma streaming behind her. _Operator_ backpedaled rapidly as Tyre worked to clear out of the way, then lit off his own thrusters and skimmed backwards down the street with a couple grenades of his own to cover the retreat.

By this time the _Bär_ had recovered its bearings and set off - angrily, Gilt fancied - in pursuit of _Operator_. But it had taken no more than two steps before _Blue Asgard_ landed deftly behind it, touching down with a grace that belied her multi-ton mass. The _Bär_ spun to meet the more immediate threat, but she was faster - her ephemeral blue blade erupted from its back with rapier speed, and with two viciously efficient jerks of her arm _Blue Asgard_ bisected the stunned machine from titanic armpit to titanic armpit. Its lopsided halves thundered to the ground, and Tyre started back for a better look at their handiwork as he congratulated Gilt on a job well done.

'No!' Gilt said sharply, yanking _Blue Asgard_ out of her abortive flight away and into a skidding stop; sparks flew as her massive, angular feet bit into the lanicrete beneath. 'Get back!' Without waiting for him to comply, _Blue Asgard_ shoved _Operator_ bodily down a side street, and then leaped down it after him.

'What the he-' Tyre's protest was cut off as an explosion rocked the entire city block; shrapnel tore past the street mouth in an angry blur, and lanicrete dust rained down on the already dirty 'Cores.

'The _Bären_ explode when they're too heavily damaged,' Gilt explained, 'and some of the MT's do too. We've lost some good men that way.'

'I see,' Tyre said sheepishly. 'Sorry, I, uh, I didn't know.' But Gilt waved away the apology, though the gesture was invisible to the other man.

'Don't worry, no harm done. But we need to get out of here and back to Outpoint right now.' _Blue Asgard_ pointedly turned and left the side road, taking a 'set-ward-running highway at a brisk trot; _Operator_ ran to catch up.

'What do you mean - is something wrong?'

'Isn't there always...' Gilt murmured half to himself; then, to stave off further questions: 'I'll fill you in in a minute.' Time was of the essence, and right now he needed to get through to Lihnea, and warn her of what was coming.

LIHNEA TIHL

It seemed an eternity before Gilt's incoming signal appeared on the comm. She knew he was more able than most to look after himself on the battlefield, but that never stopped Lihnea from worrying all the same.

' "Gai"!' she exclaimed, still careful to use his callsign. 'Are you all right?' The ADR data said that he was, but it was better to hear it from his own mouth.

'We're all fine here,' he assured her - 'not even a scratch between us. But listen, I think we have a bit of a situation...'

Relief gave way to the beginnings of uncertain worry. 'What do you mean?' Lihnea prompted. 'What's wrong?'

'I can't prove it, but I'm certain that Gus was shadowing me for a while. I only started to really pay attention when I hit the last waypoint, but I've had a bad feeling nagging at me for most of the day.' He paused to let that sink in. 'You'd better let the major know - it's a good bet the _Geister_ know we're there.'

Lihnea resisted the urge to let fly some of the filthier language she'd heard from the Soldiers at Outpoint. For the nineteen months since its establishment the small Defense Force outpost had managed to slip under _Geistland_'s radar, and they'd begun to think they might keep it up to the end of the war. But if Gilt's feeling was right - and she couldn't think of a time when his instincts had ever been wrong - they had perhaps fewer than two hours to prepare for the near-certain attack. 'Okay, roger that, "Gai" - you and "Waylay" get started back here, and I'll see if I can't scare up a transport for you guys.' The original mission outline had called for the two Ravens to return under their own power once they were done - air travel near the Silent Line was always a chancy business with _Geist_ weapons satellites looming overhead, and never more so than for the ungainly transport craft on call at Outpoint - but given what Gilt was telling her now, that plan had just violently defenestrated itself.

'Copy that, we're already on our way. But don't worry about us - just make absolutely certain the Old Man knows what's up.' Lihnea almost laughed in affectionate incredulity. _Typical_, she thought, _for him to worry about us when _he's_ the one hundreds of kilometers deep into ghost country._

'I'll tell him just as soon as I'm off the comm with you,' she promised. '_And_ I'll have that transport out there the second I clear it with the major - make sure you stay out of trouble in the meantime.'

'Hey, don't worry - it's me.'

ALLIN BURKE

Burke was just sitting down to read the latest round of dispatches from EastCOM Home when a metallic knock sounded from the door.

'Yes, come,' he ordered gruffly, setting his trademark coffee mug off to the side. It was never very far from him, almost always at least half full, and had acquired something akin to an iconic status around the base; it just wouldn't be Outpoint without the Old Man and his EGDF mug.

He suppressed a grimace as the office door slid aside and his adjutant stepped through; he could remember a time when good old-fashioned pins and hinges still outnumbered these overly complex modern affairs, but now they were nowhere to be found, outside of a few obscure museums that specialized in obscure things. It made him feel damned old.

'I'm sorry to bother you, sir,' the lieutenant said as he punched the controls to shut the door behind him, 'but one Miss Tihl insists that it's imperative she see you immediately.' He looked and sounded skeptical, and then even more surprised when Burke ordered that she should in fact be admitted. 'Yes, sir,' he replied quickly, tapping the wall panel again. 'Miss Tihl,' his voice floated in from the corridor, 'the major will see you now.'

The Operator fairly ran into the room, and scarcely waited for the door to shut before she began speaking. 'Thank you for seeing me on such short notice, Major,' she began a touch breathlessly - had she run here from somewhere..? 'We have a problem.'

'It's no trouble, Miss Tihl,' Burke assured her. 'What seems to be the matter?' He swore, if it was another mess hall scuffle, he'd hang and quarter whoever started it - be they Raven, Soldier, or otherwise.

'It's the _Geister_, Major - I think they know where we are.'

For _that_ possibility, he was considerably less prepared. 'What makes you think that?' he asked carefully. That the Gus might eventually stumble to the location of Outpoint was not completely outside the realm of reasonability - as far as that went, Burke accounted himself damned lucky to have gone this long without attracting their less than gentle attention; but just over a year-and-a-half of skillfully misdirecting enemy patrols and keeping skirmishes at arm's length wasn't a success rate one gave up without a fight.

'Gilt called in not five minutes ago, Major;' that _did_ elicit a disapproving frown, but he decided to hear her out; 'he and Tyre deLesne were attacked by a _Bär_ while investigating the ruins of Isuka, and Gilt thinks that it was shadowing him for some time before that.' Several questions came to mind - not the least of which being what in the blazes of _hell_ they had been doing in that Surface-forsaken graveyard of a city - but one stood out above the rest.

'He "thinks" they tracked him..?' Burke paraphrased doubtfully. 'What gives him that impression?' Here Lihnea paused, looking momentarily troubled as she seemed to consider how to phrase her answer.

'A feeling,' she finally told him with obvious reluctance, looking as close to wincing as a person could without actually doing so. 'Gilt says he's had a bad feeling at him almost all day, and that he's sure the _Geister_ were watching him at least most of the way out.'

Coming from just about anyone else, that would have signaled the abrupt end to their impromptu meeting, followed only by a curt dismissal. But Burke had known both Gilt Rivin and Lihnea Tihl for almost as long as the war had worn on, and they were both sensible, level-headed people whom he considered to be pretty squared away, for non-Soldiers. Rivin's loss to that outfit of jackals he hailed from he lamented in particular: he couldn't deny the individual combat effectiveness of the Ravens, and had to admit they'd done much to carry the war in the beginning - although he largely attributed that to the leadership of the Defense Force's own Colonel Opnoff - but there were times when he honestly wondered if they were worth the headaches. They were an arrogant, insubordinate, and undisciplined bunch, and, whatever the experiences of other officers, the Ravens frequently didn't mesh with the military personnel under his own command, sometimes resulting in incidents like the previous month's debacle that had nearly torn apart the mess hall.

More than that, though, he distrusted anyone for whom the bottom line was nothing more substantial than the cold hard credit. Ravens fought for themselves and for money, and not necessarily in that order.

Rivin was different, though. He didn't seem to like talking about himself, but Burke considered himself a pretty good judge of character, and something about the man rang truer than the other Ravens whom he'd met. He wasn't in it for the money, that was certain, or he would have left long ago; military contracts on the 'Line paid well, but not _that_ well, and a reasonably competent Raven could easily make more working in the Interior under (moderately) less hazardous conditions.

No, Rivin was here because he believed in the cause, for which Burke respected him a good deal. Death could and often did lurk around unexpected corners, and most especially for the Ravens - still widely distrusted, and in some cases hated, for their central role in the end of the Controller's reign - it was almost literally thankless work. No mere mercenary would have stuck with it this long, and not for the first time Burke considered offering Rivin a brevet commission; the man did his job well and without complaint, he didn't cause trouble, he was on good terms with the Soldiers, and he was one of the best pilots that Burke had ever met. The Defense force could always use more people like that - sorely needed them, in fact, if not the added financial strain of another officer's salary.

But while he regretfully doubted that Rivin would take him up on such an offer, the man had his head screwed on pretty straight, and he might do well to heed his warning. _Besides_, he thought, settling the matter in his mind, _what have we come to if you can't trust a good man's instincts?_

Reaching to a discreetly inset comm panel on his desk, Burke raised Captain Garrand, the station XO. 'I don't have time to explain, Jim, but I have reason to believe the _Geister_ may be on their way - sound general quarters.' He looked up from the brief hail to see surprise written across Lihnea's pretty features, who had plainly come prepared to argue her case. 'That Raven of yours is a fine man,' Burke told her, rising from behind the dreary, prefab desk to leave, 'and I've never yet done wrong by listening to his sort when they speak up.' Burke escorted the Operator out of his office and started down the corridor, mind already flying through the myriad preparations that awaited him. 'Most of me hopes that he's wrong,' he confessed in parting - 'but if he's right, he probably just saved a lot of lives.'

GILT RIVIN

As the heavy transport helicopter shot low over the arid land beneath and into sight of Outpoint, Gilt was met by a scene of well-ordered chaos. The station's small corps of combat engineers had put to good use the copious sand and dirt that stretched farther than the eye could see, and the last of their main battle tanks - the bulk of the force their tiny outpost had to project - scurried into the positions prepared for them a short distance from Outpoint's low but sturdy wall; turrets and cannons peeked out just above the crests of miniature sandy slopes, the rest of the vehicles sheltered behind the man-made berms. There were only a reduced company in the whole of Burke's modest command, but EarthGov had spared little expense in forging itself into a fearsome military power with the war's onset - though few in number, the eight General Dynamics Land Systems _Sheridan_ main battle tanks below were arguably the finest in the reclaimed world, continuing a proud and impressive reputation that stretched back into the dim nether years predating the Great Destruction. Gilt had never understood why so many Ravens looked down their noses at tanks, and could only attribute it to arrogant stupidity; those _Sheridans_ down there could absorb fire in quantities sufficient to crack open any Armored Core several times over, and their one hundred fifteen millimeter main guns would put down any but the luckiest of heavy AC's with laughable ease. Combined with the engineers' enterprising efforts they would make for a formidable main line of defense, and very likely were far more vital than the flashier 'Cores that would be flitting about the battlefield. The Raven's iconic mount was fairly versatile, true, but in essence they were the bleeding-edge, modern day evolution of the horse-mounted cavalry that had accompanied Roman legions on campaign. Though in practice it almost never happened, they were at their best when operating in support of sturdier forces, a hammer to an armored company's anvil. But somewhere along the line Armored Cores had acquired a grossly misinformed reputation as the be-all, end-all tool of modern warfare - even among the Ravens themselves, to a limited but disquieting extent, who should have known better.

But Gilt allowed such thoughts to slip away as his ride swooped down and around to Outpoint's southern edge, where the firebase gave way to several square kilometers of runway and landing pads. The airfield stood mostly vacant, now - Major Burke had ordered the pair of transports they maintained out to an anonymous staging ground several kilometers 'set-ward, the pilot told him as they made their approach, where they would be safely out of harm's way - and the four eH.27 _Arbalest_ attack helicopters attached to Outpoint Station looked almost lost amidst the empty expanse of black and gray lanicrete. But Gilt was well-acquainted with a couple of the pilots, had seen them training, and knew they would be invaluable in the hours to come; anyone with any sense out here had come to feel naked without friendly wings - well, friendly _rotary_ wings, anyway - in the skies above, and he was no exception.

'Well, here we are, boys,' the pilot announced. 'Prepare for drop on my mark.' With a short, perfunctory countdown _Blue Asgard_ and _Operator_ fell free, landing heavily on the reinforced lanicrete just a meter-and-a-half below - Lieutenant Flinn was one of the better pilots they had - as the transport jumped over a dozen meters with the sudden increase in its thrust-to-weight ratio. 'You boys watch your sixes,' he sent them in parting, speeding off toward the rapidly setting sun to join his waiting comrades.

'Will do,' Gilt promised, sending a two fingered salute to the retreating aircraft. 'Now,' he said to Tyre, turning _Blue Asgard_ around and heading for the southern entrance, 'let's go see where they want us for the festivities.'

TYRE deLESNE

The briefing was necessarily short, with time of the essence as it was, and lent an air of decided urgency by the techs and occasional Soldiers blowing in and out of the C&C on their own hasty errands; the air fairly hummed with anxious anticipation.

Tyre's part to play in all of this, he learned, was fairly straightforward - along with Gilt, he would be responsible for securing Outpoint's northern flank, mirrored by 'Sixer' and 'Scribe' on the southern. Roughly half the infantrymen of _Fuchs_ company, the base's single heavy weapons detachment, were firmly entrenched in each position, book-ends on a north-south line running through the dug-in _Sheridans_ in the center. To the Ravens fell the two-fold task of guarding the distal ends of this line, and funneling, as best as they were able, _Geist_ forces toward the center, straight into the heart of the tanks' devastating weapons envelopes.

Which seemed like a sensible enough arrangement to Tyre. By virtue of their defensive disposition, Outpoint's forces were necessarily tied to one location, but if they could sufficiently curtail the enemy's ability to maneuver as well, they could conceivably tip the balance decisively in their favor. He had never been formally schooled in military tactics, but like most Ravens of experience he had an unconscious grasp of many of the basic principles of fire and maneuver, even if he didn't know them as such.

The meager remainder of the forces at Major Burke's disposal - a (much) reduced company of six eM.5 _Crighton_ infantry fighting vehicles and the flight of attack helicopters - was out to 'rise-ward as a screening element, meant to spot the _Geist_ approach and harass it to whatever extent they could on the way in. Once the battle at Outpoint was joined in earnest, they would provide additional fire support as they were able, with _Falke_ flight acting as a rapid reaction force to exploit any weaknesses or opportunities that presented themselves; lacking a dedicated forward air controller to direct their movements, this responsibility would be assumed by Captain Garrand.

'This is where the rubber hits the road,' Major Burke finished. The activity around the comm stations abruptly kicked up into a minor flurry, the _Falken_ having evidently made contact with the _Geist_ force's leading edges. 'You know your jobs, and I know you'll do them well.' The ghost of a grin lighted on the middle-aged officer's lined countenance. 'Now go kick Gus's ass.' Motivated _hoo-ah_'s sounded from the Soldiers around the large planning table that dominated the C&C's recessed briefing area, startling the techs beyond. For the Ravens' part they kept their peace, faint smiles playing about their lips, and Captain Garrand had a few quiet words with Burke before leaving to attend to his own duties. With the _Falken_ already engaged, it wouldn't be long now.

'You ever fought a battle like this before?' Tyre asked of Gilt as they left the command and control center together. 'I haven't,' he went on, before the older man could answer. 'It feels a little weird, having to stay in one place like that. I mean, it makes sense, I think, but it's a little different from what we normally do. Or at least what _I_ normally do.' He knew he was rambling a bit, but that tended to happen when he was nervous, as he was now. Tyre didn't fully know why, though - this was hardly his first time in combat, and by the military way of reckoning things he was an ace almost thrice over. The majority of those kills were MT's, but he'd also faced down two AC's - if in the most terrifying moments of his life, he admitted only in private - and the last hints of green had left him long ago. Or so he had thought.

But Gilt seemed to understand. 'Everyone's nervous their first time against the _Geister_,' he said, smiling wistfully as though remembering some far off time and place. 'But you've already seen your first,' he pointed out, returning fully to the present, 'and we made pretty short work of that _Bär_, as you'll recall.' That was true enough, Tyre allowed, though they both knew that had been mostly his _de facto_ partner's work.

But still, he _had_ forgotten about their brief engagement in Isuka, in his anxiety over the coming battle, and it did make him feel a little better to be reminded of the part he'd successfully played, however small he knew it to have been. 'Like the Old Man said, you'll do fine.' The elevator that ran between C&C and Surface arrived just then, and Tyre felt markedly better as he stepped inside. He _had_ squared off against that _Bär_, and hadn't done half badly at all for his first time.

As the doors slid shut and the small car lifted smoothly off, he spared a glance to his right at the older Raven, standing quietly with his arms crossed in thought.

And more than that, he thought, he had Gilt to watch his back; he didn't know why the man had all but taken him under his figurative wing, but in a mutually understood, unspoken way, Tyre knew that the veteran frontliner would look out for him.

It was a comforting thought as the elevator bore them inexorably upward toward hammer's certain fall.

GILT RIVIN

It wouldn't be long, now. As _Blue Asgard_ crouched near the northeastern corner of Outpoint's lone wall, looking for all the world as though it were _she_ who surveyed the soon-to-be battlefield and not the pilot within, an unnatural stillness seemed to descend on the defenders, as though they collectively sensed the approaching storm.

But they were ready. The forces tasked with holding Outpoint Station were few, but Major Burke knew his own job well, and had made his command as defensible as Gilt thought it was possible to make it.

'But I don't get it,' Tyre had spoken up as they walked toward the AC garages - 'why don't we just get the hell out of Dodge? I mean, this place is pretty small - it can't have any real strategic value.'

Salient points, Gilt had thought, if more akin to the trees than the forest. Though of course he'd been the same way, once.

'Major Burke knows there's more to war than just the cold hard numbers. You're right to raise those questions,' he assured the younger man, 'but there are certain intangibles whose real value only becomes apparent with his kind of experience.' He'd had occasion to meet a lot of military types over his years, and Gilt had never met a finer officer than the major; he couldn't count the number of times he'd wondered how EarthGov's laughably inadequate, pre-_Geist_ 'self-defense force' had produced a man like that.

'The major's going to hold this place because it _does_ matter,' he went on, 'both to the civilians Blue-side, and most of all to the people out here on the 'Line. If we stand fast here, then we can do so anywhere - we have to prove, every chance we get, that we can and will stand up to Gus anytime or -where.' Tyre had nodded, seeming to accept his explanation, but Gilt had doubted then, and still did now, that he really understood, really _knew_ it. Or really could. He was certain that _he_ wouldn't have, at Tyre's age; he would have scoffed and made some sort of smart-ass joke or comment, shaking his head at the stuck-in-their-ways, stubborn bull-headery of foolish old men. But then, there was a lot he hadn't understood, back then.

'But maybe more than that,' he'd finished with studied jocularity, 'the Old Man's just too damned _stubborn_ to give this place up without a fight.' That had elicited a genuine laugh, and seemed to satisfy Tyre almost more than the rest. _To be that young again..._ Gilt had thought, shaking his head as he watched him jog off to mount up. He didn't regret his years - not that he had all that many on his wingman - but the world was a much simpler place in one's youth, and he almost envied Tyre that perspective.

Almost. Strapped into _Blue Asgard_'s cockpit, eyes intent on the small hills in the distance, he was ultimately glad for the vantage of his more advanced years. The truth of the matter was, the world _wasn't_ a simple place, and he preferred to see it as it was. Or at least more so, anyway - who knew what revelations awaited once he hit forty.

In a sudden blur of motion, _Falke_ flight shot over the crest of the low hills to 'rise-ward, and then just as quickly hit the deck as tracers and a few missiles arced up into the sky behind them. The six _Crighton's_ that had gone out with them appeared right after, careening around the base of the same hills as they drove hard for Outpoint.

'Kick the tires and light the fires,' 'Sixer' remarked from the southern flank.

'Nah, I think they just missed us,' Tyre said, drawing a few laughs.

'Cut the chatter, you two,' Captain Garrand snapped. '_Falke_ puts the _Geister_ at twelve klicks out - that's one-two kilometers. They'll be here any minute.'

Both Tyre and 'Sixer' replied with an appropriately penitent-sounding 'roger that' as the _Falken_ flew low over Outpoint, dropping rapidly toward the hastily assembled LZ at the relative 'back' of the base. Garrand had originally wanted to keep it inside, but that would have meant room enough for only one helicopter at a time to refuel and rearm, and he'd reluctantly ordered fuel and ammunition dragged out to a convenient spot below the 'set-ward wall, coming down in this case on the side of speed.

It grew still again as the helicopters powered down for their brief stay aground and the _Crightons_ skidded to a halt in their own staging areas, and as evening descended the whole of the Silent Line held its breath.

ALLIN BURKE

The C&C was deathly quiet - even the ubiquitous background noise of the small mountain of computer equipment seemed muted. Expectant faces pointed as one to the large situation map that dominated one of the walls, a master display of everything transpiring above as reported by the myriad sensors arrayed around Outpoint Station. Helicopter and Armored Core sensors, FFI transponders and ADR signals, comm transmissions and camera feeds - all were fed into the C&C, whose computers in turn extrapolated a visual representation of the disparate data pouring in.

For a moment, nothing moved, as though Outpoint paused to take a collective, steeling breath.

Then...

Contact.

At the very edge of sensor range small red markers ghosted into view, moving silently toward the tiny outpost of humanity.

The sudden activity at the comm stations broke the spell entirely, as reports of the sighting flooded down from the positions above. Burke was across the diminutive command center in four long strides, and took up a headset.

'_Eisen_ company, hold fire,' he ordered, addressing the dug-in tanks. 'All units, hold your fire.' It was hard to say just how much the _Geister_ knew about the disposition of the forces opposing them, but the steadily advancing units on the situation map had every appearance and feel of nothing more than a probe, and he saw no need to give anything away for free. 'On my mark, gun emplacements only - repeat, gun emplacements _only_ - will open fire.' The eM.2A3hb heavy machine guns mounted at the corners and a couple of other key spots along Outpoint's defensive wall were rated for anything up to and including light MT's, and would likely make short work of the half dozen ahead; and if that proved inadequate, the _Falken_ were already roaring back 'rise-ward, eager to pounce on any target of opportunity foolish enough to present itself.

The seconds ticked away as the line of MT's plodded forward, inching toward the extreme upper end of the eM.2's range; Burke frowned at the almost mechanical mindlessness of it - they took no evasive measures, they sought no cover, and on the whole seemed entirely unconcerned for their own well-being. There was little more fearsome than an army whose soldiers had no fear of death, and that they faced one in the _Geister_ was an unsettling prospect.

But if they were unconcerned with their own imminent demise, then Burke held no reservations about hastening it along. Putting the headset back to ear and mouth, he gave the simple order.

'Mark.'

GILT RIVIN

The pre-battle hush exploded as the eM.2's above thundered, hurling tracers and heavy fifty caliber projectiles out to the kilometer-distant first wave. Two of the boxy MT's toppled over with the first volley, then another as the eM.2 in the middle of the wall corrected for the stiff breeze that had picked up. The remaining three let loose their own bursts of machine gun fire, peppering the area around the gun emplacements liberally. Dust and millimeter-long flakes of reinforced lanicrete rained down behind the camouflage netting that covered the _Sheridans_, ten or so meters below.

Then with a sound like thousands of sheets of paper tearing the last MT's crumpled, withering away under the heavier cannon fire from the four _Falken_ as they passed overhead. The walltop machine gunners waved as they shrank into the distance, hunting for more challenging targets.

'Well, war's over - let's go home,' Tyre joked over the wireless, again drawing several laughs. Garrand must have been busy with the _Falken_, Gilt figured, or he would have called him down a second time for cluttering up the comm channel.

As though summoned by his thoughts the helicopters popped back into view, jinking and generally maneuvering crazily as they slipped deftly between fire from the ground and retaliated in kind.

Then Burke was back on the line. 'This one's the real McCoy, kids,' he said, no doubt indicating the next wave of MT's just visible ahead; it moved with decidedly less caution than its forerunner, and Gilt was forced to doubt that it had Outpoint's very best interests at heart. 'Both wings, continue to hold fire; _Eisen_ company: on my signal, unleash hell.' Enthusiastic shouts of _hoo-ah_! sounded from the tankers in response.

This newest wave of MT's was less reserved than the first, opening fire as soon as it was in range; again machine gun fire raked across the wall where the eM.2's sat, and a few missiles even streaked across the sand to slam into the lanicrete just below them. The volume of fire intensified as they closed the distance, as though the MT platoons were frustrated by the apparent lack of effect their weapons were having.

'Mark!'

They never saw it coming. With a thunderclap befitting the king of gods and men himself the _Sheridans_ let loose, and eight one hundred fifteen millimeter shells found their targets. The front rank of MT's was swept away as though by a giant broom, and most of those behind either toppled or exploded - and _then_ toppled - as well. The remaining three hastily came together into a loose formation, and belatedly opened fire on the area from which they'd seen the irrepressible muzzle flashes of the _Sheridans_' main guns. But the loaders were fast, and within five seconds of the first volley another, smaller one sounded, immolating the last of the second wave.

_But now we've shown them ours and they've shown us theirs_, Gilt thought. There would be no more freebies.

_Falke_ flight's lead element was racing back 'set-ward just then, and the pair landed swiftly behind Outpoint to take on still more ordinance and fuel while their comrades busied themselves in meting out stiff judgment with their remaining munitions. Sun-like flares suddenly appeared in the air behind one, and it dropped like a rock to a cringe-inducing altitude of fewer than two dozen meters, swinging wildly over and around the contours of the land. Two missiles were fooled into thinking they'd accomplished something important, and spent their payloads on the gently falling masses of burning magnesium; the third only gave up the chase grudgingly, finally drilling a crater into a hillside as though too tired to go on. Gilt let out a quiet breath of relief that he'd only partially realized he was holding; still no friendly casualties.

Not that it could last, he knew; the real battle for Outpoint was only now just beginning, or would once Gus had rallied his main force, as he surely must have been doing by this point. He had to know a head-on assault would be costly, and the most logical option open to him, as Gilt saw it, was to sweep around to one - or both - of the flanks and press his attack there.

Which outcome it was up to the Ravens and 11-Hotels in the trenches to frustrate as completely and devastatingly as possible. Gilt's years of experience had long afforded him a proficient command of basic tactical-level warfare - which had been further honed to a quite serviceable (and more conscious) edge by his months spent side by side with the Soldiers on the front - and he clearly recognized that such simply could not be if Outpoint were to survive the night, much less the war.

Now _Falke_ flight had regrouped to the rear again, taking advantage of the apparent lull to top off fuel and weapons. They'd so far seen the most action of anyone, and would be leaned on heavily as the only available air support; Major Burke had duly notified EastCOM Home of the situation, and had put in a request for reinforcements - 'with all possible speed' - but _every_ installation on the 'Line was now at high alert, he had learned, with most bracing for a _Geist_ assault within the hour. Most orbital coverage had already winked out as surveillance satellites fell prey to Gus' hunter-killers, the latest casualties in an eerily silent theater of war predominated by the unflinching dictates of mathematics and physics. Relief by dawn was _possible_, but wholly contingent upon the length and severity of the assaults impendent elsewhere on the 'Line - and in any case, the battle would surely be over by then, whatever the outcome that entailed. Outpoint was effectively on its own for the duration.

For most to whom the fuller scope of their circumstances were known, Gilt supposed it was an altogether lonely feeling. But Ravens were both by reputation and by nature a solitary lot, and he was no exception, accustomed for most of his life to looking out for himself, by himself; even a year-and-a-half on the 'Line hadn't changed that. This was nothing new - only the scale of it was different.

History was nothing if not consistent.

TYRE deLESNE

If he was anything, Tyre was disappointed.

Even he, tactician that he wasn't, knew the battle was far from over; but as his earlier worries had faded he'd found himself actually looking forward to it, eager to test his mettle in a real pitched battle and see just what he was made of.

Combat was often described as long hours of boredom punctuated by moments of stark terror, however, and so far that was at least as true on the front as anywhere else. Far more so, in fact, in his own experience; other Ravens might have been different, but almost every assignment he'd taken on back in the Interior had been short and to the point - he'd been dropped off in or just outside the mission area, made or fought his way to the objective, and then left as quickly as he'd come. It didn't pay to dawdle, and the corporations liked efficiency - sometimes they'd even throw in a bonus for a job done quickly and cleanly, if one were lucky.

But that was the downside to fighting a defensive battle or war, Tyre guessed - safe behind the redoubts and fortifications though one was, it was the _enemy_ who dictated the tempo, having been ceded the initiative by default. It was probably unavoidable, in their case - bravely marching their minute force off to fight Gus in the open country and on an even footing would have been an act of lunacy - but it was still damned annoying.

'If you can manage to stay awake,' Gilt broke into his thoughts, 'there'll be excitement to spare before long.' Tyre grunted in mild consternation; again that uncanny ability to read him, like his partner had known him for years rather than weeks. He didn't know how he could have divined it from _Operator_' motionless form, but somehow he'd picked up on his impatience almost as though it were his own. Weird.

'Just as long as it doesn't go too late,' he sent back nonchalantly - 'I'm not allowed out past ten.' More laughs from the Soldiers on the line.

'Two weeks and Lyssa's already got you tamed and trained? You hardly put up a fight at all,' Gilt returned easily. 'Where's your pride?' Now the line erupted with _ooo_'s and additional laughter, and he caught one Soldier's anonymous remark that Lyssa could 'train' him anytime; Tyre thought he heard a _worked!_ from _Eisen_'s commander.

'Right between my legs, where it's always been,' he answered smoothly. This time there came gleeful cries of _oh!_ and _snap!_ from the comm, accompanied by one Soldier who sounded like he might die laughing right then and there.

'I'm forced to agree with the Raven,' Garrand's voice interrupted gruffly, cutting off whatever rejoinder Gilt might have had waiting, 'since his G-slagged brain obviously doesn't work right - how many times to I have to tell you not to clutter up the _Geist_-humping comm channel, "Waylay"?' All banter abruptly died, and Tyre could picture the tankers and infantrymen returning with studious diligence to their jobs; but before he could answer, Gilt cut in.

'I'm sorry, Captain, it was my fault. Just easing a bit of the tension.' That earned him a non-committal, unimpressed-sounding grunt.

'Well if you apes are done monkeying around, it might interest you to know the _Falken_ have spotted the main body of the _Geist_ army that's still out there.'

'Roger that, Captain,' Gilt answered for everyone. 'Don't worry about us, we'll keep frosty.'

True to his partner's words, Tyre ran a practiced eye over his HFD and status board; all green. _Operator_ was ready as always, and Tyre himself had been so for some time now. All they needed was Gus.

ALLIN BURKE

Burke called Garrand aside into the offset briefing area, which presently lay deserted. 'Rivin's right, our boys are just blowing off a little steam, Jim' he told his numberone quietly. 'There's no harm in that.' He watched the captain carefully, interested to see how he would respond.

'You're right, Al, I agree.' When in private they tended to relax somewhat the formalities of military protocol. 'But getting on their asses let's them know there _are_ limits, keeps them from crossing any _real_ lines.' Burke nodded, satisfied. That's what he would have done, in Garrand's place; it was the XO's job to be the 'asshole', as Garrand would have so colorfully phrased it - to keep everyone in line and handle the day-to-day running of a command while the CO maintained his distance, and his executive officer clearly had a firm grasp on the nature of their respective duties. He would do right by his own command, someday.

'Fair enough,' Burke said simply. 'But I've kept you from the _Falken_ long enough,' he said, jerking his head toward the improvised FAC station; Garrand acknowledged the informal dismissal with a quick nod and returned to his post in the C&C proper.

_Good man, him_, Burke thought to himself. _Hell, all of them are_. He'd been privileged with probably the best command of his career in Outpoint Station and its people; if anyone could hold against _Geister_ and odds alike, it was them.

GILT RIVIN

The rapidly dimming evening sky was alight with weapons fire as the _Falken_ continued their dogged harassment of the incoming _Geist_ assault. _The_ incoming _Geist_ assault. The big one.

Gilt flexed his gloved hands on the control stick and throttle column half unconsciously, and took a last look at his status board; all in the green.

Of course.

His _semper fidelis_ Armored Core had never let him down, and he was sure she never would. They had a mutual understanding, he fancied, that each one would always take care of the other.

'That's my girl,' he told the big blue-gray machine, patting a console.

'You boys and your toys,' Lihnea broke in, rolled eyes evident in her tone; with the full-on struggle for Outpoint imminent, every Operator was maintaining an open comm channel with their Raven. There was little for them to do, as the pilots knew their jobs to the letter, but they would provide an extra set of eyes, and a relay for any updates or changes as the battle unfolded.

'Now now, no need to be jealous - you're still my girl too,' Gilt soothed. A mock-indignant _hmph_ sounded over the line.

'I'm sure that's what you tell all the girls.'

'All two of them,' he laughed, finishing the familiar joke - 'you know you're the only women in my life.'

'Well in that case, I guess I'd better stick around, then.'

'Good to hear it.'

'I'm always here if you need me,' she reminded him; all evidence of her earlier mirth had gone. 'Gilt...'

'Yeah.'

'Be careful.' With that the channel clicked, returned to its stand-by status to wait until needed, leaving him alone with his thoughts once more.

Gilt double-checked to make sure his gloves were nice and snug, savoring that last moment of exquisite calm just before storm's break.

And then, it was time.

EHVAN FLINN

Both of the transport crews stood stock still, staring wordlessly 'rise-ward as weapons fire continued to arc into the darkening sky. It didn't feel like the main battle had started, to Flinn, not just yet, but it was only a heartbeat away, he was sure.

_Surface protect you_, he thought silently to the defenders.

TYRE deLESNE

Tyre tensed as _Falke_ flight's heated air-to-ground battle inched 'set-ward, watching as the unseen enemy force edged inexorably forward. It was so close he could almost feel it, like a thing he could reach out and touch. He grinned a half-feral grin beneath his stylized flight helmet.

He was ready.

Bring them on.

GILT RIVIN

The deeply shadowed land before Outpoint exploded in a frenetic collage of tracers, muzzle flashes, and missile efflux, marking the renewal of the _Geist_ offensive; clearly, the pleasantries were to be dispensed with, this time.

But if the _Geister_ had chosen not to stand on ceremony, so too with the tankers of the 'Iron First' company; almost as one the entrenched tanks replied with their own resurgent fury, sighting in on the telltale flash of the enemy's weapons discharges. The MT ranks were abruptly alight with explosions as individual units fell before the wall of fire that _Eisen_ company hurled at them, and for a moment it looked to Gilt, incredibly, as though they thought to try attacking along the same vector yet a third time.

But then their formation broke apart, as expected, splitting roughly in half as it swept around to flank Outpoint's more vulnerable sides.

Or at least it tried to. As soon as the newly-formed _Geist_ wings had set foot in range, the trench-bound Soldiers opened up, pounding them mercilessly with ATA missiles and launcher-borne grenades. The corner gunners added their own brand of havoc to the mix, pouring down streams of machine gun fire into the advancing lines.

And the Armored Cores, not to be left out, contributed in whatever way they were equipped to do so, be it with missiles, machine guns, or some other manner of harnessed destruction.

Leaping away from the northeast corner in whose shadow she had been crouched, _Blue Asgard_ let fly with machine gun and Exceed Orbits alike, yellow tracers and blue-green energy bolts competing for targets as she tore off at a run down the length of the trenchworks. Gilt was satisfied to see that most of them landed hits, dropping or seriously wounding MT's as they struck; from the corner of his eye he saw _Operator_, still prone, snapping out grenade and rifle shots with expert ease.

Amazingly, the _Geist_ assault didn't falter so much as large pieces of it simply stopped, destroyed or too badly damaged to continue forward. Again that disconcerting lack of any indication that they cared for their own lives or well-being.

For his part Gilt could only take distant note, and file it away for later examination as he loosed another burst of machine gun fire and ducked behind a low rocky rise toward the end of the northern flank. He allowed _Blue Asgard_ to rest a moment, to recharge the energy capacitor her EO fusillade had all but depleted, and then was out in the fray again, machine gun spitting cold, heartless death in calculated bursts. The 12.4mm ammunition it utilized was not as heavy as that of the eM.2's methodically working across the enemy's ragged wings, but it managed to compensate with slightly more advanced engineering than the venerable .50 BMG, which had no need of such technological wizardry.

Now _Operator_ was on his feet as well, dumping missiles as fast as they would lock at the nearest MT. Chemically propelled projectiles streaked back and forth across the no-man's land between attacker and defender, forcing both northern 'Cores into some creative maneuvers to avoid the unpleasant consequences of too close an encounter.

The _Geister_ bore this abuse with near-mechanical stoicism, each unit of their eclectic ranks firing until they could fire no more, brought down by a defending missile, grenade, or bullet. The front-most platoons lay down a vicious sheet of fire along the Soldiers' trench as soon as its rough location had been extrapolated, forcing large numbers of them to keep their heads down; Gilt clenched his jaw as he saw two infantrymen go down, angry at the loss he knew he couldn't prevent. Not that he wouldn't try - he'd be damned if anymore died than had to. _Blue Asgard_'s mid-sized energy cannons were let loose once more, burning fresh holes in the _Geist_ lines in concert with the missile salvoes Tyre had resumed.

It was a ferocious defense for so small an outpost, and had thus far managed to hold the _Geister_ at bay, but Gilt distantly worried how they would keep it up. His ammunition levels were hovering fitfully around half, and Tyre's were likely about the same by this time, he estimated; there would be a lot of pressure on the Soldiers if one or both of them had to leave to reload.

The arrival of the IFV's provided something of a solution, their added fire support almost driving the _Geist_ advance back in places as they swung out beyond the edges of the present line of engagement. Gilt ground his teeth as one took a missile and was thrown spinning off on its side, but the other five kept up their attack without missing a beat, dumping their own anti-tank missiles and heavy cannon fire into the _Geister_ with wild abandon.

The _Eisen_ Line, as Gilt thought of the bermed up _Sheridans_, was holding its own expectedly well, all but impervious behind its made-to-order redoubt. They continued to thunder almost merrily away, dispatching MT's as fast as their reloaders could yank out the spent shell casing and slam in a new.

And so the defense held, tenuous though it was. An hour passed, then two, and as evening gave way fully to night _Blue Asgard_ burned hard for the third time to the back of the base and the makeshift ammo dump that was there. Her machine gun's empty box magazine banged loudly to the ground as her massive left hand took up a fresh one, slamming it home as she first ran then skimmed back to the beleaguered but still-holding flank. Another of their _Crighton's_ had been knocked out, and lay burning at the edge of the battle, but its crew had sold themselves at a high price, dropping MT after MT even as they were cornered and their vehicle shot to pieces.

The fire from the entrenched Soldiers had never flagged, warhead after ATA warhead roaring away into the chaotic half-darkness to strike at whatever target was available.

Gilt blew out a tired breath as he dodged out of the way of a particularly nasty stream of fire, then spun to retort with his own machine gun and its more effective results.

_So far so good_.

TYRE deLESNE

There was little in the way of conscious abstract thought on his battlefield, but somewhere in the back of Tyre's mind he knew that this was nothing like he'd expected.

It was better.

Ducking behind a small rocky outcrop and out of a missile's path, then around and out from behind the other side to return fire, he grinned as the offending MT toppled backwards, charred body awash with the flame of a magazine that had cooked off. He felt truly alive, like it was here that he really belonged, cheating death on the battlefield.

His hands fairly danced on _Operator's_ controls, and he often felt like he could see two moves ahead; the world's crystal clarity at such moments was exhilarating.

A quick leap backward saved him from an errant rocket, and he retaliated with a pair of the mid-sized missiles that comprised a figurative half of his ranged arsenal. 'Nice try, ground pounder,' he mocked the fallen MT, middle fingers of both hands coming up in final insult.

_Operator_ bucked hard then from a warhead detonating right at his feet, and the machine stumbled backward for a few steps before his AUBAL system compensated. Tyre just shrugged, and returned to the never-ending hunt for the next target.

ALLIN BURKE

The Old Man took a sip from his ever-present mug, the outward appearance of imperturbable calm itself; his eyes left the master display only occasionally, mind constantly scrutinizing and reëvaluating the ebb and flow of the minor war raging up above.

His kids were doing well, tirelessly keeping to their equally tireless defense as they worked to stem the relentless tide of the _Geister_. Though he hated the loss of each and every casualty as only a good CO could, he was also fiercely proud of the effort the men and women up there had put forth.

_Everyone's a hero today_, he thought, hand tightening on his mug, _no matter the outcome._

GILT RIVIN

He couldn't pin it down to a precise time, but sometime within the foregoing hour, the fighting had taken a vicious turn.

Outpoint's own personal No-Man's Land was strewn with shattered and burned out hulks of former MT's of all kinds, which lay so thickly in places that the oncoming _Geister_ had to move well out of their way to press forward.

The three remaining infantry fighting vehicles still roamed the field of battle, slaloming crazily in and out of the _Geister_ on their own deadly errands, but their armor was shot away in more places than not, and badly scored where it still hung on.

Neither _Operator_ nor _Blue Asgard_ had remained unmolested either, both bearing a motley collection of dents, energy scoring, blast patterns, and, in a few places, holes; the latter had even had a magazine shot out of her hand, once, when Gilt had taken a bit too long to reload.

But the first real sign of trouble, he supposed, had been the missile that slipped through to impact horrifyingly in the heart of the Soldiers' position. There was nothing large to target, nothing to which a guided weapon's on-board computer could lock on in the trench, and the MT's could only fire in its general direction, hoping for a lucky hit; but somehow, through the Devil's own luck, one such had flown true. Half a dozen bodies had flown sickeningly through the air in twice as many pieces, some of them landing on top of their mortified comrades somewhere down the line.

The one sliver of good luck had been that that particular fireteam had just sent the last of their own Anti-Tank and Armor missiles on their way, and there were no munitions to cook off; a quarter of the Soldiers might have died, otherwise.

But even as the nearby survivors were picking themselves up, the _Geist_ assault reached a particularly intense peak, no doubt seeking to capitalize on the inadvertent havoc it had wrought. _Blue Asgard_'s and _Operator's _firing rates both rose to near incessant levels as they pushed their weapons to the very brink of their absolute bottom-line tolerances, but fresh MT companies had pressed dangerously close before the stunned Soldiers below had recovered and renewed their stalwart defense. Gus looked to be on the verge of turning the northern flank when out of the ghostly shadow of the 'rise-ward wall charged _Eisen_ company's second platoon, guns blazing fit to match the wide-thrown gates of hell.

'Yeah! How 'bout that cavalry!' Tyre whooped, and a distant cheer was taken up by the Soldiers on the ground as the tanks barreled into the ranks of MT's like the bulls of long-dead Spain. The _Geist_ attack faltered, and then failed completely before the armored onslaught and the tankers' battle cries of 'the Iron First!'.

It was a remarkable sight, but Gilt's instincts had suddenly flared, and he cast hurriedly about the _Sheridans_' position for whatever had set off his growing dread. Nothing about the _Geist_ MT's falling back appeared to be cause for concern, and he couldn't see anything else out there besides-

Oh no.

_Oh, dear God, no_, he thought in horror, invoking a name not uttered in decades and more save by one other whom he knew.

Beyond the fiery pool of illumination demarcating the ever-shifting borders of the battlefield, Gilt could just resolve the unmistakable lines of a _Bär_, speeding out of the dim distance on deceptively powerful thrusters, and looming huge and menacing in the pale moonlight. The missiles and grenades those monsters carried were worrying enough, but it was their punishing energy weapons that he truly feared; the _Sheridans_ had never been designed to stand up to that kind of firepower, and would die as quickly as they fought bravely. If they even saw the Surface-forsaken thing coming.

But even while the archaic epithet sounded in Gilt's mind _Blue Asgard_ threw herself viciously into the air, clearing a startled Tyre and the befuddled Soldiers in the space between heartbeats. The tiny sun at her heart surged, and over twenty-four thousand kilograms of star-hot plasma thrust roared forth from her unequalled thrusters as she shot across the battlefield at a frantic third of the speed of sound.

But the _Bär_ was closer, and for all her incomparable speed Gilt's 'Core was still bound by the laws of physics, damn them all to hell; she would arrive just a scant second or three too late.

In a baldly desperate gambit Gilt hurled his empty machine gun at the unholy Armored Core, the only thing he could think of that might possibly buy him the time he needed. But _Blue Asgard_ aimed true, and the boxy weapon smacked hard into the startled _Bär_ with a resounding _clang_; it looked up at him, most probably stunned more by the flat inanity of his tack than by the impact itself, and paused momentarily in its pursuit of the still-fighting second platoon.

It was enough.

Like a wrathful archangel _Blue Asgard_ tore over the tanks, ramming her angular shoulder squarely into the hapless _Bär_ with bone-jarring force and immolating the powerful, but now incidental, auxiliary thruster mounted there. The oversized _Geist_ tumbled backward under the assailment of the smaller Armored Core's not-inconsiderable mass, and it scrambled madly to regain its equilibrium.

No quarter was given.

The energy blade on _Blue Asgard_'s left forearm snapped to life with a distinctive, ominous _buzz-hum_ as she continued her implacable pursuit, setting her prey and the immediate area awash with a cold blue light; she whirled, and in a textbook perfect _Zwerchhau_ Gilt drove the weapon mercilessly home. For the second time that day a _Bär_ died at his hands.

TYRE deLESNE

Though the battle continued unabated all around, at the scene before him Tyre could only stare, dumbfounded. He had scarcely been aware of the _Bär_ and the danger presented thereby before it was ruthlessly cut down, its molten-edged pieces not yet settled before _Blue Asgard_ was on the move again.

For the second platoon's heroic charge had not been without risk, and he saw now - belatedly - that it was in very real danger of being surrounded and cut off.

But he could only watch, transfixed, as Gilt carved a fiery swath through the intervening MT ranks, _Blue Asgard_ not so much moving as..._flowing_ from one to the next. Her...his..._their_ movements were almost- 'Classical' was the only word Tyre could think of, something he'd heard from Gilt once that seemed the only fitting description for the unabashed _swordsmanship_ before his half-disbelieving eyes.

Then he saw the danger, the new threat upon which his partner was so lethally intent. The five or six heavy MT's of the erstwhile _Bär_'s slower, would-be escort were just now catching up, their also-heavy weapons a very real threat to the embattled _Sheridans_.

The mission frequency suddenly sounded with Gilt's voice: 'Heavy weapons-north, on the second platoon!'

The spell broken, the theretofore entranced Soldiers shifted their angle of fire, missiles and grenades tearing across new paths to the MT's trying to encircle the friendly armor; Tyre too snapped out of his stupor, adding the electric fulminations of _Operator's_ plasma rifle to the fray. MT's toppled and collapsed before Gilt's Armored Core-turned-Reaper, clearing a path for _Blue Asgard_ as she bore down on the heavy platoon that had already opened fire.

Then the blue-gray Armored Core was by them; around them; among them. Her right shoulder found purchase a second time, and as the bulky MT careened into its neighbor from the impact _Blue Asgard_ whirled, decapitating the one behind. From the two still standing behind her she swung away and around, out from the path of a large rocket that surely would have taken her arm, coruscating blue efflux trailing beautiful and deadly in her wake. Completing the spin as she arced with lethal grace around to _their_ rear, _Blue Asgard_'s ephemeral brand lanced through one's back, then halved the pair in a single stroke as she swung her arm in a broad, sweeping motion that encompassed both.

Again _Operator's_ weapons had fallen all but silent, as Tyre looked on numbly. For the first time he truly began to understand why Gilt carried that energy blade, spurned by most younger Ravens in favor of simply another machine gun or rifle - no longarm could wreak the kind of havoc that _Blue Asgard_ wrought now. She whirled and pirouetted and slashed like Minerva herself, ghosted among her prey like Thanatos, like Orcus.

She _was_ Death.

A cruel downward thrust finished a twitching, headless MT completely, and her wide upward stroke bisected thence the just-rising recipient of her earlier shoulder ram; a whirl even as she swung brought her around in a tight circle, flawless _Zornhau_ ending the last of the heavies with a terrible finality.

_Holy fuck..._ Tyre thought in wonderment, profanity the only response he could summon in the face of the stunning spectacle. The _Geist_ offensive had shattered, splintered at last by Gilt and the _Eisen_ second; the forward units were still heavily engaged, but beyond Tyre could see that the now-diminutive enemy rear had halted its advance.

' "Waylay", on me,' Gilt ordered, and as _Blue Asgard_ took up position near the second platoon _Operator_ leapt across the trench to join her, this time answering the call with rifle and missile volleys. Cheers sounded over the comm as the rag-tag 'cavalry' unit charged dauntlessly into the breach.

What had begun as a jagged halt in their advance degenerated into a complete rout, and Gus' forces broke into full retreat, chased beyond the range of the _Eisen_ Line's guns by the fierce 'cavalry squadron' with _Blue Asgard_ at its head.

The first Battle of Outpoint Station had been won. Deafening cheers sounded at the second platoon's triumphant return, whose selfless valor had snatched victory from the fell jaws of defeat. Gilt and _Blue Asgard_ they cheered almost harder, the fearsome, collective instrument of destruction whose Herculean feats under the pallid moonlight, not unlike Caesar himself on the Sambre so many centuries earlier, had not only halted the _Geist_ assault, but broken it utterly.

Gilt Rivin.

'Gai' and _Blue Asgard_.

_Geistbrecher._


	3. Part Two: Shooting Stars

**R****IN ****U****NIN**

Rin sighed. Tiredly.

He was tired of being hunted by these glory-seeking young upstarts, green as hell and badly in need of seasoning. The two 'Cores before him were gaudy affairs, to his practiced eye, weapons as badly mismatched to the pilots' diminutive skills as the colors were to each other, all flash and no substance. There was no pride in their work, no personality - any fool could pick up a catalogue and slap together random pieces to produce something akin to an AC, but they were more than the sum of their component parts. They were a reflection of the Raven to whom they belonged, an extension of their person - that machine was their _life_.

Or at least they should have been, he thought with another sigh. But then, it was probably his own fault, he reflected ruefully; a lot of things had changed since E-Day, many not for the better.

Hence, the two young pups who thought to bar his way, one of whom chose that moment to take a clumsy swing at him; _Elysium's_ own blade ignited with its characteristic, violent _buzz-hum_, and her arm moved easily to parry the blow.

'No,' he chided the younger man over the comm - 'Tumult', he'd identified himself - 'you're telegraphing your intentions, son; any competent Raven could spot that a mile away. Your movements should complement each other, _flow_ from one to the next - make them fluid, like water.' _Elysium's_ angular, gray-blue form grappled with the other for a brief second, then shoved it back. 'Try it again.'

Neither 'Tumult' nor his apparent partner - 'Phoenix', or something similarly uninspired - moved or spoke for several seconds, likely dumbfounded; part of Rin wanted to chuckle. Whatever they'd expected of the most wanted man on or under the Earth, a lecture on proper blade technique was probably not it; the cavernous sewer complex which lay beneath Isaac City made for a curious schoolroom.

'W- ...wait, what..?' 'Tumult' had found his voice.

'Do it again,' Rin repeated the instruction patiently. 'But this time smooth out your movements; swing, don't chop; that's not an ax your 'Core's carrying - don't use it like one.' He considered further advising 'Tumult' to be rid of that clunky MOONLIGHT he carried - it was nothing more than oversized showery, and did nothing that a smaller blade couldn't do as well and more efficiently - but he decided to hold off. One thing at a time.

'Oh, just do it,' 'Phoenix' goaded. 'If the crazy old man's got a death wish then hurry up and grant it.' Rin almost did bark a laugh at that; he was careful never to underestimate an opponent, never to allow overconfidence to cloud his judgment, but even so, these two posed no threat - they were scarcely old enough to reach the footpedals, he'd wager.

'Tumult's' AC was on the move again, haltingly, hesitantly, every step radiating suspicion as it circled warily. As it passed behind an MT-sized support pillar which stretched away into the murk above, it lunged again, and was this time sent stumbling past _Elysium_ by Rin's deft deflection. A little better, but he still had a long way to go.

'Your use of the environment was good,' he told the other Raven, sounding for all the world like a pilot instructor - 'it demonstrates passable situational awareness on your part, and a bit of a pragmatist's streak in you. That's a start.' 'Tumult' seemed to be at a loss for words as he moved back within support distance of 'Phoenix'.

The other's mouth, however, remained a bountiful source of irritation. 'Are you for real, old man?' he sneered. 'Who the hell do you think you are?'

'You're nowhere near old enough to understand the answer to that question, boy,' Rin growled. 'And don't test my patience with your cheap rookie's tricks,' he told him coldly as he saw his rifle coming up, probably in what 'Phoenix' supposed was surprise.

Primary and shoulder-mounted auxiliary thrusters flared, and ankle-deep water flashed to steam, Rin's fleet 'Core surging forward with brutal speed; her energy blade sprang back to life, and with a neat _Sheitelhau_ at pirouette's end _Elysium_ halved 'Phoenix's' incongruously sensible longarm. 'Tumult' moved uncertainly toward Rin's unguarded rear to back up his comrade, but jerked to a halt as the dull-silver rifle in _Elysium's_ right hand snapped up and leveled at his own Armored Core's face, mirroring the quietly humming length of scintillating plasma blue that held 'Phoenix' cleanly in check; it was technically a gamble, as the loss of an AC's sensor-laden head posed no immediate danger to the pilot, but Rin was betting that the maw-like sight of the barrel, which for all appearances was aimed straight at 'Tumult', would overawe his rookie credulity.

'Don't try it, son,' Rin said, not unkindly; 'Phoenix' was a _Geist_-kissing asshole, but 'Tumult' showed promise. 'I've been doing this since before you were mischief in your mother's eye - neither of you has to die today.' He saw no reason to throw away the lives of two kids who were simply too young to know any better, unless one of them forced his hand, forced him into the cruelly binary choice of him or them. But both 'Cores wisely dropped their primaries, and began edging away slowly; at least they were smart enough to know when they were beaten. 'I'm sorry we had to meet like this, "Tumult" - maybe the next time will be under better circumstances. But until that day, remember what I told you - fluid like water.'

'Tumult' mumbled a thoroughly confused-sounding 'yes, sir', not at all sure how to address his perplexing elder.

'There's no reason all three of us can't walk out of here,' Rin continued, 'and if you boys give me your word that you won't follow me once we part ways, I'll believe you.' His voice took on just the hint of a dangerous edge. 'But don't make the mistake of betraying my trust.'

He accepted their awkward but solemn promises with a satisfied nod of his helmeted, gray-templed head; they wouldn't bother him again. _Elysium_ pointedly turned away from them and started off down one of the myriad sewer and maintenance tunnels that crisscrossed back and forth beneath Isaac City. 'Then until that day,' he sent in parting.

And then they were gone, retreating back whencever they'd come, and it was over.

Rin sighed.

He was tired of these petty, meaningless battles that he was forced to fight everywhere he went, with kids too young to truly understand why they hunted him, or even glimpse the larger picture, much less make sense of it. Right now on the 'rise-ward front - right _now_ - humanity battled for its very future, and it galled Rin that he was instead stuck here in the Interior, mired in the same inane, meaningless holding pattern in which he'd lived for the past decade-and-a-half. Go to ground until inevitable discovery; fight his way out; scrub, rinse, repeat. He could remember when he used to fight _for_ something, rather than mere survival, and he longed to return to a life of purpose.

Oh, he lived comfortably enough - like any Raven who was good at their job he had accumulated no inconsiderable amount of wealth by the time of his...mid-career hiatus...and though most of his assets had been frozen once some of the pre-E-Day chaos had been sorted out, he'd prudently ferreted enough away in various places that were...off the beaten path, as it were, that he had ample means on which to live.

But that wasn't the point, and it never had been. He didn't care about money - that was only a means to an end, a tool to be utilized for a greater goal. What mattered to Rin was doing something that, well, mattered.

Back then, he'd made a _difference_, had made the world a better place; like Alexander and Caesar and Belisarius before him he'd been unafraid to stand tall and shake the heavens, to do what he _knew_ in every fiber of his being that he must.

Rin sighed.

But he was tired most of all, perhaps, of running. He was tired of the mindless hatred of the epithets that followed his name wherever he went.

Monster.

Demon.

Betrayer.

He was tired of the thick-headedly narrow vision of the world - he'd set them _free_, God damn them all, not betrayed them. Man had _flourished_ in uncountable ways for the last fourteen years, at last free of the Controller's shackles.

Rin's jaw took a sudden hard, determined set; enough was enough. With a rough jerk _Elysium_ changed course, taking now a side tunnel that would ultimately lead pilot and 'Core well outside the limits of the Earth Government capital - the largest city in the world save for the geofront-metropolis hybrid that was Layered itself. It was time to go, but this time finally to where he knew he belonged, where he should have gone a long time ago.

Once one started running one would die running, unless one turned and stood one's ground. _Well, let them come_, Rin challenged the universe. He didn't care. He was through letting the world's blinkered, myopic stupidity dictate his actions; he'd let that go on more than long enough. There were bigger things, much dearer things, at stake on the war-torn frontier.

It was time he left to fight for the future that he'd created.

**L****IHNEA ****T****IHL**

After the third ring failed to produce her Raven, Lihnea slid her passcard through the reader and punched in the appropriate five-digit key code. The solid door whisked aside to reveal a small, spare, but quite livable apartment, which was debatably nicer than even the quarters used by Outpoint Station's few officers. The main room served as both living and sleeping area, with a small kitchenette in a convenient corner and a tiny but fully functional bathroom occupying the only other room.

She honestly found it to be a bit austere for her tastes, but Gilt's own apartment back in Roane was cut from a nearly identical mold, and she was sure he felt right at home. He had few possessions beyond the small but well-equipped library of books in which he took such great pleasure, and had led an almost ascetic existence for as long as Lihnea had known him.

Not that she was very much different; her own living spaces, apparently, were rather less 'Spartan' (whatever _that_ little Rivinism meant) in appearance - she'd often thought that Gilt's could use a woman's touch - but she retained little more than he did, and everything of greatest importance could be packed in fewer than thirty seconds if need be. It was the most practical way for a Raven and Operator to live, as she saw it, with both so often on the move.

Both of them also kept fairly neat households, as a rule, though as she set her sheaf of manila folders and files on a convenient countertop she could see today was an exception. Articles of clothing were strewn in a rough path leading from door to couch, evidently forgotten the instant they'd been dropped...well, anywhere and everywhere. Lihnea shook her head - nothing special with her hair today, just a simple and serviceable ponytail - as she picked the top half of his flight suit off of the counter, but it was a largely reflexive gesture. He'd been understandably exhausted by the time they made it back to the 'Roost', as Outpoint's enlisted personnel had taken to calling the Ravens' small cluster of quarters, and she had only stayed long enough to see him inside and say goodnight. Lihnea was sure she'd be tired too after almost single-handedly turning the tide of an hours-long battle.

She quickly and efficiently picked her way along the rest of the textile trail, folding his clothes neatly as she went; the short stack she set on a handy chair for him, then turned her attention to the couch where Gilt was half sprawled, left leg and arm hanging to the floor. She sighed. It was designed to pull out into a proper bed...though of course he never used it as such, always insisting the couch was 'just fine'. Lihnea would never understand why men so consistently and adamantly denied themselves simple comforts.

_But boys will be boys_, she repeated the age-old aphorism with a smile, gently moving a lock of Gilt's short brown hair that had fallen down over his forehead. _I suppose that's all part of their charm._ He looked so peaceful when he was asleep - she hated to disturb him, but...

'Gilt,' she said softly, shaking his shoulder. '_Stehe auf, __Söldner_; it's time to get up.' His eyes snapped open as he jerked, startled, but he relaxed when he saw who it was; he settled back and closed his eyes again.

'It can't be time to get up yet,' he murmured - 'I just went to bed.'

'You have a funny idea of "just",' Lihnea told him, kneeling down beside the couch - 'you've been asleep for nine hours.' Nine hours and seventeen minutes, actually.

'Just five more minutes...' he opened one eye, the hint of mischief playing at the corners of his mouth '...Mom.'

With a mock-incensed squawk Lihnea snatched the pillow out from under his head, and set to pummeling him vigorously with it. The blanket Gilt had at least had the good sense to throw over himself before passing out thrashed as he tried to fend off her blows. 'All right, all right,' he gave in, laughing, 'I'll get up.' He levered himself up on one elbow, his other hand resting cautiously on the pillow between them. 'What's the hurry, anyway - couldn't this have waited until afternoon?'

'It _is_ the afternoon,' Lihnea pointed out - 'as in, "two o'clock in".' She grabbed the wrist around which his watch was, for some reason, still fastened, and waved it loosely in front of his face for emphasis. 'The crews've finished - have _been_ finished, for that matter - with repairing and rearming _Blue Asgard_; you'd wanted to look her over once you were up.' Each had their own peculiar quirks, rituals, and habits, but any Raven worth their wings monitored the condition of their mount with something akin to obsessive-compulsion; the mechanics and techs at Outpoint were some of the best, and Gilt had no reason to doubt their competency, but they weren't part of the 'holy trinity'. 'And before you say that you have all day to do it,' Lihnea preëmpted, 'you should know that there's supposed to be some sort of celebration tonight in the mess hall around twenty-one hundred. Everybody's invited, of course, and as Outpoint's hero of the hour you in particular will be expected to make an appearance.' Even as the word 'hero' left her mouth she could see Gilt's features twist in distaste, reflexive protest already forming, and she suppressed the urge to smile at his unfailing modesty. 'And,' Lihnea drove home, 'you know you hate to be in bed this late.' It was rare for Gilt to sleep much past zero-seven, let alone noon - he always said that it felt like 'half the day' had been wasted when he did.

For his part he threw up his hands in a mock-defensive gesture meant to stave off her fusillade of logic. 'Okay, you win,' Gilt laughed, 'I'm up already.' He swung his legs around to sit up, and ran stiff shoulders through a series of rotary motions. 'Anything else I should know?' In addition to her conventional duties as his Operator, Lihnea further took it upon herself to keep Gilt abreast of news and relevant goings-on, since he so rarely had time to check the 'nets himself.

'Talk around Outpoint says that Colonel Opnoff is supposed to take some kind of inspection tour of the 'Line,' Lihnea told him; 'some of the officers seemed to be of the opinion he'd be stopping by sometime soon. There's also a rumor going around that another Raven's been assigned to us.' That got a raised eyebrow.

'Any details? Anyone we know?'

Lihnea's head moved in a negative, brunette ponytail trailing. 'Like I said, just a rumor. Probably no one noteworthy, though, if it's true.' Gilt gave a grunt whose meaning she supposed was one of agreement, and sank back into the depths of the couch. 'Hey, no more excuses - out of bed with you,' Lihnea commanded sternly, though the smile tugging at her lips as she stood gave her away.

'What?' Gilt exclaimed, with a decent affectation of indignant surprise. 'No breakfast in bed?' Lihnea lit into him with another flurry of synthetic goose down thrusts and slashes.

'Even if I _were_ inclined to feed you,' she said between blows, 'you've managed to sleep through both breakfast _and_ lunch!' He just laughed as he grabbed ineffectually for the pillow that she wielded with almost rapier-like accuracy, but she pulled it out of his reach. 'Your clothes are over there,' Lihnea told him peremptorily, pointing to the chair where she'd set them, 'but you'll probably want something a little fresher than those.' She threw a meaningful look toward his miniscule closet, and moved to collect her stack of folders. 'Remember, mess hall at twenty-one hundred,' Lihnea reminded him; Gilt nodded in something like mild resignation. 'See you tonight, Gilt.'

**G****ILT ****R****IVIN**

To be honest, Gilt supposed, it wasn't as bad as it could have been. The mess hall celebration was a lively affair, to be sure, but from what Lihnea had told him he'd half feared that the personnel in attendance would demand a speech of him, or some such thing. Though he knew that many of his fellow Ravens disagreed - and ostentatiously at that, more often than not - it was his experienced opinion that it generally behooved one to keep a low profile in their line of work, and professional policy had long ago become personal habit.

But, thankfully, he'd found upon his cautiously late arrival that the celebrants were thoroughly occupied already, allowing him to skim in under the radar and link up with Lihnea without incident. '_Bedienende_,' he greeted her, inclining his head slightly and offering her one of the drinks that he'd secured for them.

Lihnea smiled warmly as she accepted the proffered beverage. '_Rabe_,' she gave in reply, completing their familiar salutation. Gilt took a seat beside hers; the room's two dozen or so tables had been rearranged into a loosely concentric series of concave arcs enclosing an impromptu dance floor, at the edges of which people stood talking in small knots. Some of the more musically inclined Outpointers had improvised a band, and as Gilt leaned back on his elbows they were wrapping up a raucous rendition of 'Johnny B. Goode', of all things; he distantly wondered where on Earth they'd dug _that_ up.

Lihnea turned to look at him, forelocks swaying lightly. 'Get lost on the way?' she asked rhetorically, mirth hovering at the edges of her eyes and mouth; Outpoint Station was fairly small, as such things went, and beyond the first week on-base it was effectively impossible to lose one's way. 'Or did you just lose track of time?' They both knew that Gilt was punctual to a fault.

'Well, first I had to reconnoiter the point of ingress...' he began, explaining in his best debriefing voice.

'Mm, and "assess threat levels in the target area," no doubt,' Lihnea finished for him, quoting from the same dusty operational manuals in the Global Cortex library; a delicate eyebrow arched in a graceful expression radiating both skepticism and amusement. Gilt rocked forward to rest his elbows on his knees, head hanging theatrically.

'Guess I'm that transparent, huh?'

Lihnea's features assumed a sympathetic arrangement, though the laughter never left her eyes. 'Only to me,' she soothed, giving his back a quick, reassuring rub. He patted her hand affectionately in return, before a troop of Soldiers pushing their way toward the dance floor forced both to lean back out of the way; one threw a quick apology over his shoulder as they passed. Gilt studied the group with interest as they filtered through the crowd, noting its composition. One of the corporals - Benning, as he recalled - was actually a company man, as were a few of the others; a quick survey of the room yielded similar sights elsewhere.

'Now that's interesting, isn't it,' he said thoughtfully, directing Lihnea's attention to the G.I.'s and their corporate counterparts - C.I.'s, he supposed..? - with his chin. Although the company forces stationed on the 'Line had been accepted to a greater degree than the Ravens, they had never been truly welcomed by the EGDF personnel they'd been sent to augment. Discipline, despite speculation to the contrary by some of the less knowledgeable media personalities, had never been an issue; the mega-companies, perhaps above all else, valued efficiency, and in that interest cultivated military arms that were every bit the professional equal of the present-day Defense Force - in urban warfare, as a matter of fact, corporate soldiers were arguably the better trained, and company administration of its military assets was an order of magnitude better organized. It had instead been the culture shock, on both sides, from which problems had arisen. For, though trained toward largely similar ends - the disciplined application of lethal force - Soldier and soldier hailed from widely divergent and frequently incompatible schools of military thought. Where the EGDF was founded in large part upon what remnants of military tradition had persisted through the Great Destruction, the guiding principle of the corporate military machine was, more often than not, naked efficacy, even in comparatively mundane spheres of its operation. EarthGov Soldiers had been horrified to learn that their opposite numbers did not salute one another, which everything they had been taught told them was a gross violation of protocol and martial courtesy - yet from the company point of view such obtuse practices were antiquated, served no purpose when one's rank insignia already demarcated with perfect adequacy the clear line between superior and subordinate, and, worst of all, wasted time; they had been discarded accordingly.

It hadn't helped, either, that corporate presence on the 'Line was not entirely voluntary. Such was not to say that they would have yielded their holdings on the frontier without contest - they rarely fought more viciously than when their profit margins were endangered - but they had initially held to their policy of prosecuting the conflict on their respective, individual bases; the first EarthGov overtures broaching the prospect of joint operations had been met with cool, if not quite contemptuous, dismissal.

Colonel Opnoff, however, had been granted extraordinarily broad discretion in the matter; his orders from the Earth Government President were, in very nearly as many words, simply to 'hold the 'Line with all available resources'. Standing on a near-criminally liberal interpretation of his mandate, he had threatened to withhold or withdraw EarthGov support from corporate-held cities at several crucial moments - unless they agreed to both commit forces to the 'Line and submit them to Defense Force authority; the corporations themselves were free to conduct their affairs with the same license that they always had, but any of their soldiers stationed on the frontier were, in effect, property of EarthGov Eastern Command for the duration of their tours of duty, or 'of the emergency'. Such _cartes blanches_ Gilt regarded as perilously foolhardy in even the right hands - if it could be said there were such a thing - but he had to admit that the colonel wielded his with considerable, if Machiavellian, dexterity. Whether he had been bluffing or not about the cities in question - and Gilt hoped for all their sakes that he had - the companies had blinked first, unwilling to risk the damage to their Surface infrastructure.

Or the wholesale slaughter of their people, for that matter - less than scrupulous as businessmen though they might have been, corporate executives were still human beings, and none save the most ruthless would knowingly abandon civilians to almost certain death. Policies were written and soldiers duly dispatched to shore up EastCOM's tenuous line in the sand, and through rocky trial and error Soldier and soldier both learned to compromise with one another, chivvied in the direction of a more united front by the common foe nipping at their heels.

Lawful orders from any superior, no matter his background, were to be obeyed without dissent, with stiff penalties imposed upon any who felt that they were above the authority of a different uniform. Charges of insubordination would quickly land one in the stockade, while dereliction of duty or desertion in the face of the enemy, if one's actions were adjudged of as such, resulted in sentence to a swift execution; smart commanders on both sides had agreed that cohesion was imperative, and had not infrequently exacted the highest prices for misconduct from their own men and women.

The question of proper salutation was less straight-forward, and its solution was at best an inelegant, ad-hoc amendment of the existing regulations, but it had eventually been resolved to the satisfaction of most. Members of the EGDF, pursuant to the traditions and mores of their organization, chose (and were expected by their Defense Force superiors) to render proper honors to _all_ officers of greater rank, were they government or corporate - yet corporate officers could not rightfully _demand_ as much of any EarthGov Soldier; in turn, members of the corporate militaries were not required to salute superior officers even of the Defense Force, although as a matter of courtesy they would customarily return a salute from a Defense Force Soldier of lesser rank.

Where company rank devices differed from those of the EGDF, it had been deemed practical by the former, and fitting by the latter, that the soldier be permitted to wear the corporate insigne on the right tip of their collar, and the Defense Force on the left. The right shoulder of their uniform jackets, likewise, bore the emblem of the company unit to which they belonged, and to which they would return at the completion of their EarthGov tour; on the left shoulder was displayed the emblem of the Defense Force unit to which they were attached. Yet by rare stroke of administrative luck the enlisted and commissioned hierarchies of Mirage, Crest, and the other major (para)military powers were largely identical to those of the EGDF, as the corporations had found it most expedient to utilize 'off-the-shelf resources' when they had first begun organizing their respective forces.

In the end, however, and despite the active measures taken, the process of integrating Defense Force and corporate military had in many areas remained slow and incomplete...

...until tonight - and the Ravens' story was more remarkable still. Long regarded as opportunistic misanthropes who would sell their own mothers for the right price, and reviled for the instrumental role that one of their own had played in the Controller's downfall, they were met with suspicion and outright hostility at many postings along the 'Line. Gilt and Tyre had always gotten on reasonably well with the military personnel at Outpoint, but 'Scribe' and 'Sixer' had lived as near-pariahs from the moment of their arrival, and on more than one occasion had come to open blows with the men beside whom they were meant to work.

But no longer. Across the room, three men of _Eisen_ company had hefted Tyre up onto a chair - evidently the rough simulacrum of a tank, which the young Raven was meant to 'control' via two commandeered broom handles affixed to the sides. The improbable assemblage of men, furniture, and janitorial supplies was now careering wildly about the mess hall to the roaring delight of the onlooking tankers, in what Gilt could only guess was part drinking game and part initiation. Whatever his official position on the Outpoint rosters, Tyre was family, now.

And 'Sixer' - he was already something of a legend himself. Anders Calais was unusual in that, Gilt aside, he was the only Raven within more than three hundred kilometers whose Armored Core equipped an energy blade. Once carried as a matter of course, such melee weapons were increasingly viewed as anachronistic verging on useless; modern Ravens, particularly the younger members of the Order, tended to eschew them in favor of the longer-range firepower which, they felt, was more appropriate for the demands of modern AC combat.

But Calais was apparently an old guard Raven, about which Gilt made a mental note to ask him the next time that their duty schedules synched up. He had been stationed at the southern periphery of the defensive line during the previous night's fighting, and while engaging a _Geist_ MT Calais had jinked left - to the north, at the time - to avoid a rocket salvo, skimming into _Fuchs_ company's line of sight. As _Ceries_ had cocked her blade arm back for a strike at her assailant's flank, another MT farther back had chosen that moment to loose a staggered pair of missiles at the entrenched infantrymen. The first streaked directly into the lance-like blade as it reached its full extension behind _Ceries'_ back, the other arriving milliseconds later to vaporize against the scintillating red plasma as it passed by her knees and into a brutal upward slash. On the instant, Calais had been dubbed 'Skywalker' by the thunder-struck _Füchse_, many of whom he had undoubtedly saved by deflecting the incoming warheads.

The supersonic velocities at which missiles flew meant that no human reflex could possibly anticipate them in such a dramatic fashion, Gilt knew; the infantrymen no doubt knew it too. But it would have been an awesome spectacle irrespective of intent, he was certain, and anyway, he had often heard it said around Outpoint that it was 'better to be lucky than good'. In recognition of his feat Calais had been presented by _Fuchs_ company with one of their unit patches - an unofficial honor, perhaps, but in truth the highest that they could bestow. It seemed that he had been deeply touched by the gesture, for, while one of the infantrymen animatedly recounted the tale for a wide-eyed circle of listeners, 'Skywalker' was proudly showing off the _Fuchs_ emblem emblazoned across the left shoulder of his 'Tracer jacket. The 'reality' of his organizational existence at EastCOM Home had been rendered neatly irrelevant; from this point forward, Calais was one of the _Füchse_.

Lihnea, long conditioned to assimilate and process large volumes of data quickly, took the room in with a glance. 'They do seem to be getting along a lot better,' she confirmed - 'almost like old friends.' A small part of Gilt was taken aback, but only for an instant. She had always been remarkably perceptive, and smart as a whip besides - probably more so than he, as far as that went - and come to think on it again, he wasn't all that surprised she'd picked up on the change in tenor among Outpoint's men and women.

'I think this is what we've been needing,' he told her, nodding - 'we're all finally on the same side.' Where, previously, three organizations had reluctantly shared the same station, the old dividing lines had now been swept away; they were no longer just uneasy allies against a common foe, but comrades, brothers and sisters in arms who would fight and, if need be, die for one another. However impalpable, it would give them a crucial edge in the months or years to come.

For, such was, in Gilt's estimation, the single and only reason that EarthGov hadn't completely unraveled two years ago. At the outbreak of the war, the Earth Government Defense Force had drawn on a body of approximately seven thousand eight hundred forty-seven personnel, if he remembered the figures correctly - only half of whom, naturally, held combat billets. To this paltry force, rated at well under division strength, had fallen the enormous task of holding an ambiguous defensive perimeter which yawned across more than a thousand kilometers of continent - a logistical nightmare, and something akin to a physical impossibility.

But EarthGov had - then and now - one ace up its collective sleeve. In a world where corporations were the dominate governmental bodies, and in which profit margins were often as not the ineluctable bottom line which dictated policy, the fledgling Earth Government - the Defense Force in particular - was an anachronism, founded not on financial outlook, but upon _principles_. The cold, hard credit was the quintessential fair-weather friend in that, while quick to motivate one to act, it had neither the ability nor the inclination to buoy one's spirits in the face of adversity. But _ideals_ - ideals could weather any reversal, stand any storm, and could impart to one the fortitude necessary to see an ostensibly hopeless cause through to the end. Because of ideals, the Earth Government still stood.

In the dreary, late-winter days of the early war, as weary Soldiers were leapfrogged up and down the Silent Line from one desperate holding action to another, their units chronically under-manned and -equipped, the one thing that had kept them going was the conviction that their actions meant something. They had fought, not to raise Crest stocks by a point or two, but in defense of their homes, their families, their friends, in defense of man's newfound freedom from his underground exile, and for each other.

And that was what Gilt saw now, as his gaze swept the room. Whatever intelligence the Toane Initiative ultimately produced, the sea of dress uniforms before him - Crest, Oasis, Mirage, Defense Force, Kisaragi, and others - meant that, at least at Outpoint, it had been a marked success, if not quite in the manner envisioned by its author.

'You know there's even been talk of going on the offensive?' Lihnea put in. 'They're saying that we should be setting up new forward bases, and pushing the 'Line 'rise-ward.'

'Really.' Mess hall revelry forgotten, Gilt returned his full attention to his Operator. 'I hadn't heard that, actually.'

'It's nothing official, of course,' she stressed; they hadn't even finished effecting repairs from the previous night's engagement. 'But that's what a lot of the soldiers - upper and lower case both - have been saying.'

'That's good,' Gilt said, with a slow, thoughtful nod. 'Very good, as a matter of fact - it's good that they're thinking in that direction.' Morale at Outpoint had not been bad, by any stretch of the imagination, but for sometime now the Defense Force had been stuck in a sort of unconscious holding pattern; it seemed that last night's victory had given them the push they needed, as well as a taste for more. _Another success for Toane._

'It would be nice to see some real progress for a change,' Lihnea agreed. 'Although...' She abruptly had a faraway look about her. 'What do you suppose will become of us, after all this is over?' Her large brown eyes pointedly sought out the other three Ravens in the room, as well as their Operators.

It was rather uncharacteristic of her to take that sort of long view, Gilt noted; an eminently practical woman, her chief concerns were most commonly the here-and-now and its immediate ramifications. He rubbed a hand along his jaw, considering. 'As a purely predictive tool history isn't usually that reliable, but... Well, a wise man once observed that those who first gain power then fear to lose it, and I can't help but wonder in what quarter the Earth Government will find its next _raison d'__ê__tre_.' Lihnea had fully returned from her reverie, and now held her head cocked to the side, listening intently. 'Naturally, gauging the future with any real accuracy is a practical impossibility,' -as he recalled, it had been another, arguably wiser man to note that the restive landscape beyond present's ambit was forever in motion- 'but that said, I see at least two, widely-divergent outcomes.

'One, we all come back from the war as _heroes_' -the inflection in his voice made clear just how likely he thought _that_ prospect- 'the Ravens and Operators who answered the call and put their lives on the 'Line even in the face of overwhelmingly negative public opinion.' _Home to parades and accolades..._ He supposed the furthest limits of likelihood could probably be contorted to accommodate the possibility...but so too might _Blue Asgard_ crash through the mess hall doors, and ask him to save her a dance.

'Two' -and more realistically, his tone said- 'people see our service at the front as a precedent, and expect us to fall into line behind the EarthGov banner when the war's over - or find ourselves suddenly and violently fallen out of Isaac City's good graces.' That the day's allies might as easily prove the morrow's foes had ever been one of history's most poignant lessons, for such as passed their time in her classroom with any diligence.

'That's not to say the sky is falling,' he assured her, 'but there _is_ a very real element of risk for us, depending upon how things shake out.' He paused to let a gaggle of party-goers troop past before continuing. 'If I had to guess, I'd say that Opnoff's our barometer - from what I've seen he has President Vought's ear, and, regardless, the man wields enormous power.'

'Executive Order Sixty-Seven,' Lihnea supplied.

'Exactly - that 'all available resources' clause is tantamount to a license to kill. Having never met him, I'm reluctant to pass final judgment, but I can't say for certain if he's the right man for the job - or even if he is, where he stands on the Order.'

'He did knock the corporations into line pretty well,' Lihnea recalled; Gilt nodded grimly.  
'Yeah. I always thought it curious that he'd been so circumspect - almost diffident - with the Ravens' Nests, but...'

'But,' she surmised, 'you think that he might be biding his time, waiting to make sure that he only has to deal with one problem at a time.' One of the least dispensible skill sets in the pilot's repertoire, staggering the threats arrayed about oneself was at least as applicable in the geopolitical sphere, if not more so.

'It's largely speculative, but...yes, precisely. What few impressions I have are of a very..._driven_ individual, a man of principles, to be sure - but Surface help anyone who winds up on the wrong side of them.'

Lihnea accepted his appraisal calmly, as she did everything, coolly evaluating options and probabilities; she was momentarily distant, as though she'd just made several mental notes, then came back. 'Which begs the obvious question: which side are _we_ on?'

'Indeed.' Gilt let his gaze range out across the mess hall again, this time taking in the scenes of merriment from a more sober vantage; for his own part he noted somberly, almost sadly, how fleeting had been the initial flush of giddy optimism born of the sight of all the Outpointers coming together. _Easy come, easy go, is that the way of it? Everything we accomplished last night come to nothing, just like that?_

No. The potential perils were real enough and more, and the Raven Order as a whole beloved of none - but it was a puerile vantage that cast the world in dichromatic hues to the exclusion of all others. However ominous the storms that rumbled on the horizon, a hundred unknowable crosswinds blew between them and the mercenary troop at Outpoint, and the bonds forged between the station's men and women were no less substantive than the dangers. 'But for now,' he said pointedly, refusing to cede the prospect of their new-found unity so easily, 'that's still largely academic.' He made a vague gesture encompassing the room. 'They're good, decent people, and they've never given me any reason to actively distrust them. It's just that I think we'd do well to remain...vigilant.' _And hope like hell that none of the other Ravens are as sharp as Lihnea._

'We "keep our heads down and watch our sixes", right?' Lihnea gave him a bright smile.

'That's what we do,' he said, reciprocating with a smile of his own. Such lay at the very core of the Raven ethos, the tenuous unifying thread which ran throughout their eclectic Order. For, where Soldiers had each other, and a parent government to look after them, Ravens were the perennial outsiders, forever on the outside looking in. Every day, in everything that they did, each went it alone; no one looked out for them.

_That_ was what it meant to be a Raven.

Gilt felt a sudden, unreasoning impulse to hug Lihnea, the warmest and brightest of the precisely two constants in his life. Like the Christians once had, he too believed in a holy trinity, to him every bit as sacred. He temporized with an arm around her shoulder, holding her close.

'We keep our heads down and we watch our sixes.'

**R****IN ****U****NIN**

Securing a contract on the 'Line had been even easier than Rin would have hoped. Though the war didn't necessarily seem to be going badly, the military was always in need of 'fresh meat' for the 'grinder' nonetheless, as the airbase's grizzled old desk sergeant had put it. The man looked like he'd be more at home in front of an infantry platoon and under a Kevlar helmet, and Rin strongly suspected he was filling in for a more personable receptionist.

But he of all people was certainly not afraid of whatever dangers lay on the front, and had gotten through the requisite paperwork - why couldn't the Great Destruction have taken _that_ with it, too? - as quickly as he could. Within thirty minutes he was as good as sworn in - though Ravens didn't actually go through any such process - and it seemed even his lack of an Operator, about which he'd been somewhat concerned, would be no problem.

'Don't worry about that, sir,' the man - one Ty Puller - had waved his worries away, 'I'm sure the' - he glanced down to consult his computer for a split-second - 'the lieutenant colonel out there will fix you up with whatever you need.' As far as that went, it had been...some time...since Rin had worked with an Operator - but so long as the absence thereof would draw no untoward questions or attention, he was satisfied. A quick word of thanks to the tough old Soldier for his time and an inquiry into where exactly he was to leave from saw him on his way.

'It's nice to see someone willing to do their civic duty for a change,' Sergeant Puller had told him, almost drawing a disbelieving laugh then and there; Rin had thought the notion of civic duty at least two centuries dead. 'Best of luck to you, sir.'

_If only he knew whom he was wishing well_, Rin thought now in gray amusement, watching out a small side window as the land slid ponderously by beneath the massive eC.89 _Onager_ that was his ride. But thanks in large part to the massive societal upheaval following the Controller's long overdue demise, no one had ever put a face or much of anything else to his name; the extent of the infrastructural damage caused by its passing had been perhaps the most telling and altogether chilling example of just how deeply its influence had been embedded into every aspect of life.

And yet it was its _destroyer_ who was the monster. It almost made Rin want to laugh, in a sick, desperate kind of way. _The world in which we live..._ he thought bemusedly.

But it was that kind of naked idiocy which he'd finally resolved to leave behind - and, ironically, which was in part the reason he had chosen to fight for these people in spite of themselves. Not that there was a man or woman on the front who wouldn't kill to avenge their precious Controller too, he was sure, but the active hunt for that sort of thing was a distant concern out there, ranking somewhere after 'survive today' and 'survive the next day', he imagined. It was an ideal place to lay low, in many ways, but more importantly it was a chance to finally _do_ something again. It had been so long since he'd fought a meaningful battle, so many years since he'd had a _cause_, a _purpose_ in life beyond simple survival, and only now that he was so close to it did he realize how greatly he'd missed it. It would be just like old times.

_Except..._ Yeah, 'except'. There was always a catch, that unspoken third certainty in life that Franklin had left out. Probably because it was so obvious, Rin figured.

But pithy observations couldn't assuage the guilt that haunted him still - guilt not for his actions, which he would be damned before he regretted, but for the life that they had cost. Rin had played the scene out in his mind countless hundreds of times in all the years since, considered every scenario he could think of, everything he might have done differently, but always he came to the same conclusion, the same one way that it _must_ be. Why was it, he wondered, that the right choice was so often the cruelest?

Once there was a time when that had seemed to him a foolish way to run the world, but he had long since passed the age when he would have deemed it 'unfair'. For he had learned the hard way that the universe dealt not in equity, but in cold, hard reality. Justice, fairness - those were human inventions, blankets man used to insulate himself from the crushing, starkly absolute _balance_ of nature.

Of course, such knowledge did little to palliate the soul-rending agony to which the wheels of consequence had turned, fourteen years ago - but according to the physical laws of the universe as he understood them, what had already transpired was flatly immutable, and for the time being fell somewhere below 'survive to reach his destination' on his list of priorities. However secure he might feel his anonymity to be, however infinitesimal the odds, Rin always took care to maintain a discreet watch over the faces of those around him for any telltale sign of recognition - it was, after all, almost never the _expected_ that got one killed.

_One problem at a time._

**B****RYAS ****T****OANE**

Second Lieutenant Bryas Toane took a deep breath, steeling himself.

It wasn't that he'd never given a briefing before. Every week, when he and his colleagues handed in to the section commander their reports and analytics, each typically spent a couple of minutes highlighting the salient points therein, providing Captain Averies with a rough idea of where she might want to focus for her own reports. And public speaking in general, for so many an Achilles heel, had never troubled Toane overmuch.

It was just that he'd never given _the_ briefing before. Much in the manner of a military unit, the regional command known as EastCOM was subdivided, with an eye toward greater ease of management, into three sectors, officially known as Southern, Northern, and Central - or, less formally, as Too Hot, Too Cold, and Just Right. None were of uniform size, the extent of each determined largely as a matter of geographical convenience, but the lieutenant colonels who headed them were each responsible for approximately a third of the front. Twice a month - though the specific days and weeks changed, as Colonel Opnoff hadn't wanted to establish a pattern that Gus could exploit - the sector commanders made their way to EastCOM Home for a region-level briefing on force dispositions, threat indices, and any events of note on the 'Line.

_The_ briefing. Not ten paces down the corridor from Toane, drawing closer with every step, waited the four most senior officers in the whole of the Defense Force - hence, the facetious moniker 'Tetragon' which some Soldiers applied to EastCOM Home, though in oblique reference to what, Toane couldn't quite recall at the moment. _Hm._ Die Vereinigten Staaten, _or something like that..?_ he thought. But no matter. He put the distraction out of his mind with a brisk shake of his head; he needed to be on the ball in there.

As the intelligence-gathering initiative which, embarrassingly enough, now bore his name would be front and center this week, it had been decided that Toane himself should helm the presentation of the relevant details. It was an enormous vote of confidence from Major Harrison, who typically briefed the colonels herself, although it was admittedly somewhat nerve-wracking as well.

Of course, he reflected, their awkward juxtaposition of seniority and rank was, when one got right down to it, patently absurd. For one thing, before joining the Defense Force and going off to OCS Toane had minored in military history in college, which he'd studied sufficiently in-depth to know that one most emphatically did not, as a rule, hand off regional commands to colonels; O-6's commanded pieces of divisions, not entire armies. But when the war had broken out the EGDF quite simply hadn't had any flag officers on whom to draw - period; the responsibilities of generalship had accordingly devolved upon Opnoff, who was, then as now, the only game in town. If ever one needed an indication of just how impoverished the Defense Force had been as an organization, there were none clearer than the colonel's novel blend of lowly rank and lofty position.

In consequence, the entire commissioned hierarchy was badly skewed, and officers frequently saddled with duties that didn't quite square with their rank; Major Gilina Harrison was a perfect example. She was by traditional reckoning far too junior an officer to command the EGDF's entire military intelligence arm - but as head of the 'Tetragon's' intel division all such reports from elsewhere on the 'Line went to her anyway, and there was no one above her to whom she might pass them along. The buck - whatever the hell a 'buck' might have been - stopped with her.

And on the electronic side of things, Colonel Opnoff was a Surface-forsaken cluster-fuck. While the 'East' component of the name 'EastCOM' logically implied the presence of, at the very least, a Western regional command to compliment it, no such existed, nor had it ever. On paper just one subunit of a larger whole, in praxis EastCOM constituted the entirety of the EarthGov armed forces. The colonel, thence, because he was a - _the_ - regional commander-in-chief, was also the Defense Force chief of staff; organizationally, he was literally his own commanding officer.

_Wonder if you could bring him up on charges of insubordination for violating one of his own orders_... Toane thought with an idle smirk; the potential legal implications were...hilarious.

Of course, to the binary-minded computers of the defense meta-network he could only hold one position or the other, which one depending solely upon the system in which one happened to be working at the time. To payroll and the computers that issued parking permits, he was Col. Ser Opnoff, CINCEastCOM - which meant that he was both paid less than he should have been, and not technically allowed to use the chief of staff's space in the Tetragon parking lot, in other words; on his military ID and in the personnel database, he was Col. Ser Opnoff, Chief of Staff EGDF. Once, a hapless desk sergeant had mistakenly entered the 'wrong' title on the wrong system, causing it to seize up completely and spiral down into some sort of existential crisis that in the event had taken nearly half a day to sort out. According to the techs, half the system protocols had been convinced that there was a security breach - because the 'intruder' had gotten key personal details 'wrong' - while the other half were doing everything they could to assure them that all was well; Gus could have overrun half the 'Line that afternoon, with EastCOM Home none the wiser until the next day or the _Geist_ tide rolled into their direct-fire perimiter, whichever might have come first.

Toane shook his head bemusedly. There were days that he wondered how the Defense Force even functioned, when it seemed that it must surely have been perpetuated by nothing more than a fantastic series of improbable accidents - yet somehow it all worked, in the end. And the truth was, he was damned proud to put on the uniform in the morning and do his part for the war effort - but bureaucracy was bureaucracy was a _Geist_-kissing pain in the ass.

He halted before the conference room door, and drew another fortifying breath. It wasn't like they were _generals_, he told himself - they were only colonels. _Yeah, 'only'_, a voice taunted, but he quickly silenced it, resolving instead to focus on the flat incongruity of the position that their silver oak leaves afforded them. It was rather akin to the age-old practice of envisioning one's audience in their underwear, but less likely to get one slapped with charges of sexual harassment or conduct unbecoming.

The door slid aside as he punched the small keypad to the right of the frame, and Toane strode through a space little more lavishly appointed than the barren corridor without, if somewhat more densely populated with electronic and computing equipment. The Defense Force might have _patented_ austerity, for all the concessions it spared to extraneous ornament, though in its own understated fashion he supposed it evinced creativity enough - stark as were its furnishings, like EastCOM Home at large the briefing room's motif had been set to gray and black in a wilder profusion of variety than he would have imagined possible before earning his commission. Evidently there was a certain artistry to be found even in bland unimagination.

Generously leavening his step with purpose, Bryas took his place front and center, radiating more confidence than he honestly felt - but as in so many areas of life, it was often enough just to look and sound like one knew what one was doing, and to act as though one belonged there; in his experience the façade passed muster better than nine times out of ten.

'Good morning, ma'am, gentlemen' As he tapped a few commands into the podium, calling up the visual component of his presentation, the officers seated around the long gray - of course - table nodded their greeting silently. At their head was Colonel Opnoff - EastCOM Actual himself - along whose right were arrayed several mid-ranked officers whom Toane didn't know; probably his personal staff, he figured. On his left were the three sector commanders - two of whom had traveled several hundred kilometers to be there - and Major Harrison, who for her part seemed wholly unfazed by the weight of the brass at the table; she was making notes of some kind unconcernedly, stylus darting back and forth across the dataslate that followed her everywhere.

None of the colonels struck him as the sort to suffer wastes of their time lightly, and Toane decided to jump straight to the matter at hand; at a keystroke the lights went off and the EGDF emblem on the screen behind him dissolved, giving way to a regional map centered on the frontier. 'Ten days ago, _Geist_ forces initiated a large-scale assault on the Silent Line. Of the forty-two Defense Force installations situated on the frontier' - an appropriate number of small green squares blossomed along the 'Line - 'twenty-nine came under attacks of varying severity;' a little over half of the markers sprouted the jagged yellow zigzags of stylized explosions. Considering the magnitude of the action, casualties had been mercifully light - somewhere in the neighborhood of four or five hundred, less than half of which were fatalities - but everyone in the room would have read the figures over a week ago; Toane omitted them accordingly. 'All were repulsed with a casualty exchange rate heavily favoring EarthGov and associated forces, and by dawn on the following day all positions secured from general quarters.'

Now the display blinked through a steady progression of variants on the same map, each grouping the twenty-nine facilities which had come under fire into wildly different sets of three, five, or seven. 'The pattern of attack, as far as we can determine, was largely random - at the very least, our preliminary analysis has yielded no apparent, overarching logic.' EastCOM Home S-2 had produced a cavalcade of theories - through which the display continued to scroll - but none were as yet confirmable. 'Of the aforementioned twenty-nine positions, we had previously believed eight to be unknown to the _Geister_; conversely, seven of the positions which _Geist_ forces ignored we know for a fact to be familiar to them.'

The map returned to its more neutral display of EarthGov positions, points of attack still highlighted; the time stamp in the upper left-hand corner blinked once to draw attention to itself. 'Given the timing of the attacks, we're confident that they were launched in response to the intelligence-gathering initiative outlined' - here he kept his tone studiously neutral - 'in report ECC20167-14, which called for a wide-ranging series of incursions to be made into _Geistland_ with the express intention of provoking a reaction, and thereby analyzing _Geist_ combat capabilities, response time, and organizational capacity directly.' A quick series of arrows moved about the map, showing Defense Force movements into ghost country over the relevant two weeks and the eventual counterattack; curiously, many of the installations that had sent out probing forces had been left untouched, further deepening the murk that surrounded Gus' intentions. 'Pursuant to the implementation of said protocol, a wide variety of sensor equipment had been allocated to most installations on the 'Line.' Some of the most sophisticated tech in the repeopled world had in fact been sent out, designed to quantify anything and everything that could be measured via the EM spectrum. 'While the original plan called for sensor-laden vehicles to follow our probing forces over the 'Line once a rough response pattern had been established, Gus was good enough to come to us.' The ghost of a smile lighted on a few faces around the table. 'We're still sifting through it, but suffice it to say that we got more data than we could have realistically hoped for.'

He paused for just a heartbeat. His entire career, a comparatively brief three years though it had been, culminated in this moment, his own personal coup-de-grâce. 'Ma'am, gentlemen, this is our enemy.'

With a touch of his finger to the podium's control pad, the screen began flicking through a host of detailed schematics and concatenate, appended analyses; a quiet ripple moved across his diminutive audience. 'For the past two years we've had little more than snippets of sensor data pulled from our various forces on the 'Line, and that only sporadically - as sophisticated as our sensing equipment is, it's designed for only a minimum of multi-functionality.' The amateur military historian in him couldn't resist a slight illustrative digression: 'For example, the radar arrays that our aircraft carry today really aren't appreciably different from those used by the United States air and naval forces on their own combat craft during the Gulf Wars.' In a small corner of his mind the same historian momentarily wondered why he'd landed on that particular for-instance. As conflicts went the Gulf Wars weren't especially long or harrowing; unless one were interested in an example of the shattering effects of overwhelming air superiority upon the morale of a militarily inadequate enemy, they weren't all that remarkable. 'Our resolution and interpretive software are a little better, of course, but the basic technology hasn't changed fundamentally in hundreds of years - because really, it hasn't needed to. Radio waves are radio waves are radio waves.

'But with the tech sent out by CARTA,' he pressed on, returning from his tangent, 'it's a whole new ball game - for the first time we've been able to put some hard numbers to _Geist_ capabilities.' The parade of images paused at an MT schematic; the table of specifications in the lower right-hand corner blinked twice then enlarged to fill the screen. 'Because we've never managed to capture any ghost tech, we can't be sure where Gus's performance ceilings are. But the numbers that we _do_ have now have been triple-checked and beyond by virtue of the sheer number of sensor windows that we had on the 'Line - these figures are as lanicrete as they come.'

Toane reactivated the lights, and the EGDF emblem swam back into view on the display screen; he looked out over the table. 'Any questions?' Opnoff was conversing quietly with one of his adjutants, and two of the lieutenant colonels appeared lost in thought. But Kelling Iverson, commander of Just Right - Toane thought of him as 'Goldilocks Actual' - spoke up.

'How soon can we expect updated threat dossiers to hit the 'Line?' he wanted to know.

'Well, sir, our section's still combing through all the data, but we should be able to put a rough manual together inside of a week' - he glanced at Major Harrison, who confirmed his estimate with a surreptitious nod - 'with a more complete dossier ready for distribution in about two.' Iverson had a reputation for impatience, but the answer seemed to satisfy him.

With no other questions raised, Harrison rose to take over the more general remainder of the briefing. 'Thank you, Lieutenant,' she said; then, as he passed her on the way to take his seat, she whispered: 'Great job, Bryas.' Her overview of the situation on the 'Line was short and to the point, in consequence of both a personal style that ran toward the clipped and efficient, and a moderate lull in enemy activity.

The more than twenty-two thousand Soldiers of the Defense Force - now swelled to nearly three times, not even counting the Ravens and integrated corporate troops, the number on which they'd drawn at war's onset - were strung out along the frontier in mostly company- and battalion-sized knots. They tended to cluster most densely about the command hubs for each sector, gradually thinning as one moved farther out, and the Tetragon, though situate two dozen or so kilometers behind the Silent Line, boasted the heaviest single concentration of forces on the continent. A fortress in every conceivable sense of the word, EastCOM Home was manned by a Defense Force in microcosm; tank companies roamed its outskirts, heavy weapons battalions and their emplacements were a human palisade atop its walls, and flights of attack helicopters prowled its skies. Its structures were as durable as the sorcery of modern engineering could make them, with its most important systems and facilities located fifty meters below the Surface in ultra-hardened bunkers; Toane shuddered to think of the planet-cracking force that one would need to threaten them, and fervently hoped that Gus didn't have anything like that on call. On the whole, EastCOM Home was a more formidable redoubt even than the EarthGov capital of Isaac City.

The EGDF air forces were likewise broken up according as their resources were needed, with greatest burden placed on their attack and utility helicopters. Its three squadrons of air superiority fighters had seen considerably less action, sitting out much of the war at quick-response airstrips behind the 'Line and only scrambled occasionally; the _Geister_ evidently eschewed traditional air power for the satellite-borne cannons that hung hundreds of kilometers overhead. And the crews belonging to the Defense Force's pair of eB.3B strategic bombers Toane felt especially sorry for, as they had been forced to wait out the war in maddening idleness back in the Interior. Logically, Gus had to keep his infrastructure somewhere, but to date no one had been able to make it far enough into ghost country to find it - and anyway, until they did something about his pet Star Wars program, even at their supersonic cruising speed the _Eclipses_ would be easy targets.

But for the moment, all was relatively quiet on the 'rise-ward front. Major Harrison wrapped up her run-down of the past two weeks' sundry transpirations and Colonel Opnoff thanked them both, signaling the end of the meeting. As the colonels filed out of the room Harrison caught Toane's eye and motioned for him to hang back. 'Ma'am?' he asked, once they were alone.

'I think you impressed them,' she said, tilting her head toward the now-vacant seats; he looked doubtful.

'Really..?' He'd found their stony faces all but inscrutable.

'They aren't the easiest men to read,' she allowed, in seeming agreement with his unvoiced thought, 'but I've been briefing them twice a month for the past nineteen - I'm pretty sure they were pleased.' Toane was still dubious, but if she said so...

'I'll take your word for it, ma'am.'

The major smiled at that, then took a seat at the table and motioned for Toane to do the same. 'I'm reassigning some of our people,' she told him, 'putting together a team to handle the _Geist_ data and the threat dossier - how would you feel about heading it?'

He blinked, taken aback. 'Major?'

'It was your idea that netted us the information in the first place,' she pointed out reasonably, 'and you've been working with it from day one anyhow - honestly, I doubt that anyone else on the 'Line knows Gus better. The ball's yours to run with if you want it, Bryas.'

He took all of a second-and-a-half to consider. 'You can count on me, ma'am.'

Another smile tugging at the corners of her mouth suggested that she was somewhat less than surprised by his decision. 'I thought I might.' Harrison rose to leave, and Toane fairly jumped to his feet after her. 'Put together a list of personnel you'd like to have on the project. I can't promise you'll get them, but I'll see what I can do.'

'You'll have it by the end of the day, Major.'

She walked to the door but paused in front of it, hand hovering in front of the keypad. She looked as though she were debating something with herself, and when she turned to look at Toane an apologetic expression flitted across her face. 'I want you to know that I'm formally recommending you for a promotion,' Harrison said finally. 'Chances are they won't approve it, but it'll go in your file regardless.'

Though in its fullest extent it had been kept tightly under wraps, the war had placed a crushing financial strain on EarthGov's coffers - stemming, as with so many of its administrative maladies, from its abjectly humble origins. When, several decades into their living interment, the corporations' civilian charges had grown restless, the former had placated them by instituting the Earth Government. Despite it's lofty appellation - a deliberately crafted echo of ages past - it had been intended to provide nothing beyond the illusion of light at tunnel's end; it had held little authority, less actual power, and had been saddled with the assumedly unfeasible task of returning man to the Surface.

Naturally, it had signally failed to achieve its objective, though whether it might ultimately have succeeded in its mission, had a lone Raven not acted first, remained a point of some contention between modern historians. Of more immediate concern at the time, the rogue _Söldner_ had in one swift stroke obviated the entirety of the Earth Government, which had begun casting about in earnest search of a problem to which it might yet be a solution. But bureaucratic inertia was perhaps the ultimate expression of Newton's First Law, and the force necessary to excise the useless organ the corporations instead opted to spend on Surface reclamation.

In the _Geisteskrieg_ EarthGov had at last found the question to its answer, yet its aspirations had far outstripped its means. Then a fourth-rate military power, its sovereignty had extended no farther than the confines of Isaac City and a handful of its satellites, its finances structured accordingly. It's defense budget, propped up by tariffs and the represented taxation of its meager populace, had borne the weight of its seventy-eight hundred-strong defense force during peacetime, but nearly buckled beneath the heavy expenditures of a military at war. The rates at which fuel, munitions, food, water, medical supplies, and spare parts were consumed had all more than tripled, and as aggressive recruiting drives had gradually yielded fruit - adding still further to its fiscal burden - only a ruthless effort to streamline EarthGov spending had kept its figurative head above the proverbial water. President Vought had reluctantly raised taxes, simultaneously diverting money from extraneous public building projects and scaling back government funded benefits. It had been a difficult balance to strike between pecuniary necessity and the maintenance of the people's good will, but in an unprecedented act of legislative sanity congressional salaries too had been cut nearly in half, with the happy side effect of placing politician and general populace in the same abstracted boat; the President had led the way with Executive Order Sixty-Two, reducing her own income to a quarter of what it had been. Everyone, without exception, helped to shoulder the war effort, though public approval, remarkably, held steady at higher levels than they had before the _Geisteskrieg_. President Vought had always been frank in her annual address to the citizenry, informing them that, while she regretted the measures which she'd been forced to take, their stable of practicable options was limited to near-binary simplicity; the time-honored practice of deficit spending on a national level was only viable if there were first other states from which to borrow. Vought had also ensured that non-classified spending was a matter of very visible public record, but, more than that, she had the rare ability to make her people feel good about themselves. Impressing upon the civilian populace the vitally important role that it played in the defense not of their cities, but of their _nation_ - a word not used in conjunction with the first person possessive in over two centuries - she had instilled in them a sense of unity and purpose not seen for hundreds of years, and they bore their hardships not with complaints, but with pride. Though Sheridan had been the Earth Government's first President, Camilla Vought was - so to speak - its Founding Father.

The Defense Force, the ultimate destination for over half of EarthGov's total GDP, felt the pinch in its commissioned ranks. With defense spending riding a razor's kiss from the line between sustainability and collapse, increases in officers' salaries on any but the smallest of scales were financially untenable, which in practical terms translated into a marked reduction in promotion; as the _Geisteskrieg_ had worn on, the odds of moving up the pay grade ladder had been sharply curtailed, and were now more akin to a lottery than anything else. Colonel Opnoff, laboring for years beneath the responsibilities of a man several ranks his senior, the Defense Force could not possibly afford to pay in kind, and he effectively marked the pinnacle of commissioned advancement for the foreseeable future. To avoid the overproliferation of senior officers at the artificial bottleneck, virtually no one was promoted save, by curious quirk, first lieutenants, whose transition to the rank of captain had become largely synonymous with promotion in general - on the rare occasion that even higher-ranked officers were given the chance for advancement, it was jocularly said of them that they, too, had 'made captain'.

As a lowly second lieutenant, Toane knew that his chances ranged somewhere between poor and abysmal, but it didn't bother him overmuch; he dismissed the matter with a shake of his head. 'That's all right, the ego boost is nice, anyway - and besides, it's not like I'm in it for the money.' If credits had been his chief concern, he could likely make twice what he was now in the private sector.

'Definitely the wrong place for that,' Harrison agreed with a chuckle. She tapped the control pad, and the door slid open. 'Have a good day, Bryas,' she bid him, starting down the corridor in the direction of her office.

'Thank you, ma'am, you too.' Heading for the 'Enclave', as he and the other analysts called the room that housed their computers, situation displays, and work stations, Toane was already composing a tentative requisition roster, carefully weighing _curricula vitae_ and what he knew of his colleagues. It was always a pleasure to find that one was well-regarded by one's superiors, and he had every intention of earning the high opinion which Major Harrison held of him.

**L****IHNEA ****T****IHL**

'There you are.'

Lihnea looked up to see Aya's head peeking over the rooftop edge, framed between the gray handrails of the service ladder. 'Mm-hm,' she replied around a mouthful of screwdriver, then let the tool fall from her lips into an open palm. 'Would you believe that in almost two years I've never gotten the chance to properly calibrate this thing?' She waved a hand over the compact Fürringer telescope resting on her crossed legs.

'I didn't know you were into astronomy,' Aya said, climbing the rest of the way up and moving to sit across from her. 'I don't think I've ever seen you out here before.'

'That's because I never actually had the time to _get_ out here,' Lihnea told her with a rueful grin. 'Things were pretty crazy, when we first arrived: the war had just started, so Soldiers and tanks and trucks were passing through at all hours of the day or night, most of them on their way to someplace else on the 'Line, and they had Gilt coming and going almost non-stop. He was the only Raven they had at the time, so...' Her slim shoulders rose and fell in a shrug. 'I spent more time in the C&C than out of it, I think - really, I was only ever in my quarters to sleep.'

'That does sound a bit nuts,' Aya agreed, brushing a wayward lock of blonde hair back behind her ear. 'I can't believe you guys've been here that long.' She gazed out across the drear landscape, more brown than green, and shook her head in mild disbelief. 'You two must really be committed.'

' "Who will take a stand, if not us"?' Lihnea intoned gravely, giving her best Gilt impression; Aya giggled.

'That's pretty good, actually - your delivery's spot-on.'

Lihnea smiled. 'He's right, of course,' she went on more seriously. 'I'm glad enough to do my part, and Surface knows they need all the help they can get out here.' Sliding a twelve millimeter eyepiece out of its housing on the telescope, she turned it over a few times to inspect it before placing it in the dark wooden case by her right knee; her finger hovered slowly back and forth over its sister eyepieces as she considered her options, settling at last on a forty-five millimeter sibling. 'But, they can apparently get by without us for at least one afternoon,' she added in a lighter tone, 'so, here I am.' After a few quick twists of the screwdriver Lihnea gave the eyepiece a light tug, and sat back, satisfied. 'There.'

'What did that do?' Aya asked curiously, leaning in for a closer look. 'Did it increase the magnification?'

'Just the opposite, actually.' Taking the reassembled Fürringer from her lap, she uncrossed her legs and drew them up under her, shifting to a more comfortable position. 'The magnification factor is a function of the telescope's focal length-' she ran a slender finger from one end of the instrument to the other '-divided by the focal length of the eyepiece.'

'Oh, so the longer the eyepiece...' Aya nodded her understanding. 'Gotcha. But how come you want less magnification?'

'Well, when you zero it you're basically making sure that the telescope and the spotting scope are focusing on the same object at some arbitrarily long distance,' Lihnea explained, pointing to the smaller optic bolted on top. 'Normally I'd use the Moon, some lunar feature or another, but obviously, I can't do that just now.' She gestured vaguely to her right, in the direction of the slowly sinking sun. 'But there's a low run of hills to the south, right on the horizon, that should do well enough for now.' Lihnea reached back to grab the tripod folded on the roof behind her, to which she reattached the telescope; rising gracefully, she flicked the catches on each leg, allowing them to extend fully before locking them back into place. 'And since I'm working with kilometers instead of AU's or light years...' She swung the telescope around and squinted into the spotting scope.

Aya nodded again. 'Right, you don't need that kind of resolution for something so close.' She rose as well and folded her arms, head cocked to the side thoughtfully as she looked on. 'You seem like you know a lot about this sort of stuff, Lihnea - how come you're an Operator and not an astronomer?'

Lihnea chuckled as she made a few adjustments. 'Actually, this is pretty basic amateur astronomy. But you're right, I didn't always want to work for a Raven's Nest.' She looked up from the telescope to the other woman, arching a self-deprecating eyebrow. 'When I was a little girl...I actually wanted to be an astronaut...'

'Ah,' Aya said meaningfully, favoring her with a smile at once knowing and sympathetic. 'Probably wouldn't get too far with that one, these days.'

Brunette forelocks waved gently. 'No, definitely not,' Lihnea concurred. 'Even astronomy was more or less dead, by that point.' Inside a quarter of a century underground, astronomers had devolved into little more than glorified librarians of the rarefied and arcane, jealously husbanding their hoards of books and charts for purposes opaque to all save themselves. 'They used to rig up remote-operated observatories to send to the Surface from time to time, but the Controller had stopped authorizing the use of the elevators and airlocks that they needed a few decades before I was born - "unacceptable risk of contamination".' She rolled her eyes.

'But that didn't stop you.' Aya indicated the telescope with an elbow.

'Mm...yes and no,' Lihnea allowed, straightening from her work; she arched her back, stretching. 'There were still plenty of books to read on the subject - I had a shelf full of them when I was little - but obviously I wasn't going up _there_ anytime soon.' She pointed skyward. 'I was only twelve when we made it back to the Surface, but by then I'd had to move on; I never really lost interest, but life just sort of pulled me in a different direction.' She bent back over the Fürringer, moving from spotting scope to eyepiece and back again. 'And some useless academic field was the least of everyone's concerns at the time anyway,' she continued. 'Besides all that, there were hardly any telescopes left. It's not something that you'd really think about, but almost none survived the Great Destruction, and obviously no one bothered to make any more while we were down there.' She tilted her head in the general direction of the ground. 'They didn't start manufacturing them again until...oh, about five or six years ago, although they were pretty expensive - still are, as far as that goes.' Non-essential products that they were, portable telescopes existed only in very meager supply wholly unequal to the satiety of existent demand. Even lower-end models fetched prices of thousands of credits, those of higher quality going for far more; in most places her Fürringer would be almost as hard to find as a real chocolate bar.

'I'm not really an expert, but yours looks pretty nice - must've cost you a fortune.'

Lihnea straightened again with an amused sniff. 'It cost _someone_ a fortune all right...' Aya quirked an inquiring eyebrow. 'Oh, it was Gilt...' Lihnea shook her head, momentarily non-plussed. 'About four years ago - not too long after they'd started making these again - we got to talking about the night sky over lunch one day in Roane, and I happened to mention an old Skywatcher that I'd seen in an antique shop as a girl.' She paused, savoring the pleasant memory of the city's beautiful waterfront promenades. 'I said something about buying a telescope of my own when they came down in price, but it was only a passing comment, and the conversation moved on right after that. I didn't think anything of it at the time, but I should have known better.' Her eyes rolled heavenward as she spoke, as if in search of some hint of numinous wisdom to explain the friend with whom she'd been gifted. 'He has a memory like a Surface-forsaken event horizon - once something's in, it's in for good. I'd told him about my interest in astronomy a year or so before that, and he must have remembered - two days after I'd mentioned the Skywatcher, I came home from work to find this.' Lihnea shrugged helplessly and rested a hand gently on the telescope.

Aya moved a hand to her chest, touched. 'Aw, that's so sweet... He must really care about you, if he pays attention to stuff like that.'

Lihnea let out a breath equal parts love and exasperation. '_Idiotischer Dummkopf_ Raven...' The warmth in her voice rendered the ostensible insult a term of remarkable affection. 'He'd do better to pay attention to his bank account. I didn't _need_ to have a telescope - not the way that he'll need money to retire on someday.'

'No, but he needed you to have it,' Aya pointed out - 'your being happy makes him happy.' She touched a friendly hand to hers. 'You two're really lucky to have each other.'

Lihnea only nodded mutely; the other Operator was more right than she knew. There had always been classmates and colleagues enough to provide some manner of company, but in all reality Gilt was the only true friend whom she had ever known. She recalled little of her parents, and after they had died when she was four, as a ward of the company she had been shuffled too far and too often to put down any real roots. She had made a goodly number of pleasant acquaintances, and even enjoyed a few romantic interludes, but in the final analysis they had all, perforce, run toward the fleeting.

With Gilt, however, she had at last connected - for the first time she had felt genuinely close to another person. A lifetime of emotional solitude had strongly conditioned her instinctive assumption that such was simply the natural order of the world, that in the passing cordiality and shallow passion of her previous relationships lay the full ambit of interpersonal commerce. Yet almost before she realized it, the anonymous Raven whom the blind forces of happenstance had seen fit to deposit upon her figurative doorstep had become her dearest companion. He was so unlike the other men whom she had met, never asking or expecting anything in return for the kindness that he showed her - indeed, he seemed loath to accept any attempt at conspicuously reciprocal generosity. As their friendship grew, it became gradually but increasingly apparent that he was concerned not simply for her well-being, in the antiseptic fashion of her corporate guardians growing up, but her happiness as well. Beneath his reserved demeanor pulsed more love and warmth than she would have imagined possible, all of which he unabashedly lavished upon her in his own, understated way.

Most of all, perhaps, he was always there for her, without exception - and Lihnea knew, somehow, that he always would be. It had happened so subtly that she never even noticed, and when it at last dawned on her one day it did so with all the impact of Mercurean daybreak: she trusted him, wholly, completely, and without reservation.

'Not every Operator gets along with their Raven so well,' Aya was saying; Lihnea snapped back to the conversation with a blink.

'What about you and Tyre?' she asked, shaking off her reverie. 'You seem to work together pretty well.'

'Oh, Tyre and I get on just fine,' Aya assured her. 'But he's actually my second; my first Raven and I didn't exactly...' She bobbed her head from side to side, evidently searching through suitable euphemisms. '...see eye to eye,' she finished. 'Which is weird, since our psych evals matched us pretty closely - our IC was better than ninety-six percent.'

Lihnea shot her a sly look. 'Ah, a Global Cortex girl, huh?' They were the only Raven's Nest that used such extensive personality work-ups to pair Ravens and Operators; most others favored a more standard battery of interviews, some supplementing them with the further wrinkle of a live exercise to see how well the two meshed under pressure. 'So you guys're still sticking to that old Freudian stuff?' she teased.

'Yup, 'fraid so,' Aya answered with an easy grin. 'We haven't quite joined the rest of the Surface-dwelling world yet.' She winked, then tapped a thoughtful finger against her lips and gave Lihnea an appraising look. 'Now you, you must be...Raven's Ark? No,' she amended quickly, 'you're _Rabenheim_, all the way.' Lihnea dipped her head in an affirmative. 'Thought so,' Aya said; her expression waxed curious. 'Is the exit exam really as bad as they say? When my friend Emma and I were just starting the GC program at LU, her sister Kelsie transferred over to _Rabenheim_'s for her last year; I heard one of the upper classmen telling her that the final test was the size of a textbook.'

'I wouldn't go quite that far,' Lihnea laughed, 'although you do spend more or less your whole last semester prepping for it - if you're smart, anyway.' Finished working with the telescope, she seated herself beside it again, stretching out her legs and reclining back on her elbows; Aya, having eschewed the other woman's more comfortable blue jeans for Global Cortex's trademark blue-green, knee-length skirt, folded her legs beneath her to sit, propping herself up with her left arm. 'The bulk of it was just straight memorization, which wasn't so bad - the real killer was the "Cored MT Operations" half of the test. They made us learn AC systems from the inside out, current part specs, some of the relevant physics, handling characteristics...even some basic tactics; it was essentially a really condensed version of flight school.' She dropped her gaze to the roof awkwardly, abruptly a touch embarrassed. 'We aren't supposed to advertise it, but...we're all pretty much qualified to operate MT's and AC's.' As they served their Ravens in the capacity of liaisons at large as well as mission support, the _Rabenheim_ school of thought staunchly believed in graduating Operators able to anticipate their clients' needs as comprehensively as possible.

Aya's eyes were wide. 'Surface Above, Lihnea,' she breathed. 'I always knew you guys were smart cookies, but... Well, a third year told us once that you were all trained pilots, but we never really believed him.'

'The worst part was not having any simulators to practice on - we had to learn everything from ops manuals and part manifests.' A light 'rise-ward breeze stopped to play with the long locks of hair on either side of her face. 'We're all about _theory_, at _Rabenheim_,' she said with mock professorial severity - ' "why, if it can't be learned from a book, then it can't be learned at all".' Her burlesque of one of her stuffier instructors elicited another giggle from Aya. 'But honestly, it sounds more impressive than it actually is. I don't know what the other student might have told you, but we weren't taught to do too much more than start the things up without overloading anything, and move them from point A to point B - really baseline stuff.

'Besides, for you I heard they pushed the physics component pretty hard; from the horror stories that _we_ were told, it sounded like it could have been a minor unto itself.'

'Ugh, don't remind me,' Aya groaned - 'those courses were seriously brutal. I mean, not to brag or anything, but most of us had pretty high AGA's - maybe not quite CARTA material, but we were no slouches. Even so, though...' Her head shook almost dazedly in remembrance. 'They wanted us to work out things like thrust-to-weight ratios and max acceleration and energy efficiency indices - not just based on "show room" specs, as they put it, but over the course of a "typical" assignment, taking just about every variable that you could think of into account. They even had us finding dynamic drag coëfficients as an AC lost mass in expended ordnance and discarded weapons!

'Pretty much, if an ADR system could ever tell you something about an AC, we had to know how to calculate it - plus a few things that it can't. They started hitting us with that stuff our second semester, and it really kicked my butt for a while - I think my assessed grade average dropped a full tenth of a point because of that stupid class.' She grimaced. 'It was tough going for a while, but we helped each other out where we could - oh, and thank the Surface for Brenda, Koji, and Marc; I'm not sure if I would have survived that semester without them. Those three really had a knack for physics - they just _got_ it, you know?' Her mien took on a momentarily distant air as her eyes found purchase on past events; the hint of a fond smile brushed across her lips. 'Emma and I used to joke that Brenda must dream in equations - it was like she understood physics on a _genetic_ level. We actually wound up putting some informal study groups together around the three of them, after a couple of weeks; it got a little easier our second year, once concepts started coming together, falling into place, but in the beginning they really helped keep our heads above water.'

'Did they make you do your work on paper?' Lihnea inquired; Aya nodded grimly.

'You too, huh? Surface Above, our instructors were death on dataslates - almost everything we turned in had to be written out by hand.' She screwed up her pretty face in distaste. 'So analog...'

Lihnea winced sympathetically. Though Surface reclamation was proceeding smoothly, paper and pencils remained relatively expensive. Trees had been prohibitively rare before E-Day, limited, as they were, to whatever could be coaxed out of the eminently finite soil by Layered's artificial sunlight. Memory of the Great Destruction, moreover, had inculcated a nigh on parareligious veneration for the sanctity of the natural world; perhaps all the more, after exile's end, environmental lobbyists pressed government and corporations alike about the preservation of natural resources. 'Even _Rabenheim_ wasn't _that_ mediaeval,' Lihnea agreed - 'it was mostly just math that we had to do by hand like that. Almost every class, I think, they told us the same thing -

' "You must always, always show your work"!' both women said in unison, evidently subjected to the same mantra during their time at their respective schools; they shared a laugh.

Then something that Aya had said belatedly caught her attention. 'Your friend's sister,' she began, giving the other Operator a sideways look, 'Kelsie - she wasn't Kelsie _Sears_ by any chance, was she?' Aya drew her head back in mild surprise.

'Yeah, actually, she was - did you know her?'

Forelocks swayed again. 'Not personally, no; we were the same year, but I went through the program at Upton College in Trene. We heard about her, though. Did Emma talk to her sister much?'

'All the time - why?'

'Well, I don't know if she ever mentioned it, but whoever warned her about the exit exam shouldn't have worried: Kelsie earned the second highest score' -she paused for emphasis- 'ever.'

'Seriously?' Aya's eyes went wide. 'Wow - she never said anything about that.' An amused sniff. 'I guess I'm not surprised, though. I mean, Emma's pretty sharp - our AGA's were neck and neck all three years of college - but Kelsie was straight-up brilliant. None of us were exactly shocked she wound up at CARTA.' Her mouth twisted in a wry grin.

A handful of miscellaneous memories kaleidoscoped into focus. 'You know, there were rumors that CARTA had been sniffing around her transcripts,' Lihnea recalled. 'They probably headhunted her for their AACE section - she blew the CMT Ops part of the final completely out of the water. She was one of, I think, three people who ever earned perfect marks on it.'

'Huh - I didn't know they were looking at that kind of in-depth AC engineering.' Aya seemed taken aback. 'I thought only the corporations did.'

It was Lihnea's turn for a knowing grin. 'I think CARTA's interested in just about everything.' EarthGov's premiere R&D organ, the Center for Advanced Research and Technological Applications, she was certain, had fingers in theoretical pies that she'd never even heard of. 'I know a few years back they decided to pull the concept off the shelf again and see if they could make it work for the Defense Force. Of course, almost everything they do is classified and then some, but the _Rabenheim_ director in Roane had a friend who was working as a consultant on the project, and from time to time less sensitive bits of information would filter in.

'From what we could gather, they started with a top-to-bottom review of the platform, and then tried to find ways to make it more cost-efficient. Mostly they were aiming for the sort of thing that you'd expect - higher-output generators, better payloads, reduced maintenance, improved sensors...'

'Anything that would get them more kick for their cred,' Aya surmised.

'Pretty much; I think their top priority was greater survivability.' As did any performance-based piece of military hardware, the Armored Core necessarily represented nothing more or less than a collection of compromises between the application of offensive force and the retention of defensive capability; by virtue of its mission profile, the MT family as a whole struck a balance heavily tipped toward the former end of the scale. As a rule its constituent members were fast, agile, and capable of delivering a considerable range of ordnance with nearly unerring accuracy, which pollency they purchased at the cost of all save the meanest of protective measures; Lihnea had herself always thought of them as something like the terrestrial equivalent of the air-to-air fighters that had retaken wing in recent years.

And if the Defense Force was possessed of no marked aversion to combat vehicles which interposed so little between their operators and the worst of enemy intentions, then it was the conjunction of comparative fragility, extensive maintenance cycle, and enormous technical skill required to employ an Armored Core or Muscle Tracer profitably that had led its upper echelons to deem the weapons system financially impracticable. Unless CARTA's advanced engineering corps stumbled to a genuinely revolutionary breakthrough, Lihnea doubted that they'd find either one filling out the EGDF Table of Organization and Equipment within the foreseeable future.

'We haven't been back to Roane since the war started, so I haven't heard anything about it in a couple of years, but I'd guess that the project's still active.' She spared a wistful thought for the deep, gorgeous blue of the inland sea on whose shores the city stood, and the welcome respite that its waters might provide from the summer heat; she would have given a great deal to pass a lazy afternoon on the beach again.

'It'd definitely be right up Kelsie's alley,' Aya agreed. 'She's got a serious passion for everything CMT, from the latest prototypes to the old concept testbeds from way back when - the whole nine yards.' Her eyes strayed to the Ravens' cavernous hangar further along Outpoint's northern wall. 'She's loved the things since she was a kid - when she and Emma were little you couldn't walk into her room without tripping over one of Kelsie's model kits or action figures, and she never really grew out of it.'

'What about you?' Lihnea asked. 'Is that why you became an Operator?'

'Mm, partly, yeah, definitely. I mean, I never dug it the way _Kelsie_ did, but I've always been pretty into that stuff - I think the best present I ever got was a year's subscription to Core Fan.'

Lihnea nodded appreciatively. An actual printed magazine was a handsome gift, and even purchased in bulk they would cost a pretty centicred. 'Birthday?' she ventured.

'Christmas, actually. I'd been saving up since the middle of the year - I got some money for my thirteenth birthday - but when the holidays rolled around I still had a long ways to go. So, mom and dad stepped in and just paid the whole fee.' She grinned. 'Emma and Kelsie were so jealous... They and their parents were away visiting family that Christmas - an aunt and uncle in one of the upper sectors, I think - but once I told them what I'd gotten that year, vacation couldn't end fast enough.

'And every month, the _second_ that the newest issue arrived' -she snapped her fingers for emphasis- 'they'd be at our apartment - if they weren't there already. We'd spend hours poring over new parts and designs and arena news...' Aya sniffed in amusement, shaking her head. 'Surface Above, we were so dorky...'

'It sounds like you were quite the trio,' Lihnea observed; she smiled warmly at her companion's recollection, both happy for her and, even if she would admit it to no one save Gilt, deeply envious. For, though fiercely independent from a young age, she couldn't deny that she had sometimes wondered what it might have been like to have a best friend growing up, someone with whom to share all the formative experiences of life before adulthood; Aya's childhood sounded so normal...and all the more wonderful for it. Not for the first time Lihnea wished that she could only have met Gilt sooner, and she found herself beset by a spontaneous, irrational urge to hug him tightly.

'Oh, we were inseparable,' Aya confirmed. 'It's funny, Kelsie was two years older than us, but you'd never've known it, the way she hung out with us all the time - except for the fact that she was smart as all hell, of course. As much time as we spent at each other's apartments, the three of us might as well've been sisters; our moms always joked that they both had three daughters.'

'Where's Emma now?' Lihnea inquired; Kelsie, she knew, was almost certainly secreted away in an ultra-secure facility somewhere in the Interior.

'Four-Thirteen Forward.' Aya tilted her head back, along a vaguely northern vector. 'We can't keep in touch like normal, what with the war and all' -a shadow of dismay fell across her countenance, before it was chased away an instant later by her seemingly irrepressible cheer- 'but I just heard from her this morning; she's apparently got a new Raven flying in today or tomorrow.' By way of response to Lihnea's unspoken query, she added soberly: 'her last one...didn't make it; I guess she was killed in that big dust-up with Gus a couple of weeks ago.'

'I'm sorry to hear it,' Lihnea condoled. That one might lose one's Raven on any given assignment and without warning was an ineluctable fact of Operator life, though that never made it any easier. 'Is Emma okay?'

Aya frowned in consternation. 'Yeah. It would've been better if Kelsie or I could've been there...but she's a tough girl; she'll be all right.' The dark clouds, however, continued to gather for a handful for long seconds. Then she dispelled them with a concerted shake of her head. 'I'm sorry,' she apologized, her natural buoyancy asserting itself once more, 'I didn't mean to bum us both out or anything; I was just thinking about Tyre...'

'Oh, that's all right.' Lihnea reached over to give her hand an empathetic squeeze. 'I understand - Surface knows they give us more than our fair share to worry about, most days.' She offered a tentative smile.

'Yeah,' Aya nodded deliberately, 'you can definitely say that again. If I had a credit for every time Tyre did something that put my heart in my throat...'

'...I could retire at thirty,' Lihnea finished wryly, for her part speaking of Gilt; they looked at one another for a moment before bursting into laughter, the last of the tension ebbing away.

'At the latest,' Aya agreed, brushing aside a length of hair that had fallen in front of her eyes. She glanced about at her surroundings, then looked back to Lihnea. 'Hey,' she said, switching subjects abruptly, 'I don't know about you, but it's pretty hot out here, and I could go for something to drink - want to head down and see what we can't scare up?'

'Ah...' Lihnea hesitated for an interval of several heartbeats, caught slightly off guard by the invitation. She was no stranger to social engagements, nor did she quite share Gilt's pathological aversion to such things, but she had always felt just a touch awkward in anyone else's company. There was a certain effortless quality to her interaction with Gilt, an ease of communication that her relationships with others invariably lacked. Almost from the very beginning they had just... 'Clicked' was the most apposite word that she could think of to describe it, though it fell rather short of capturing the deeper nuances of their intercourse.

But for all that, she had found as they talked that she quite liked Aya. 'Yeah, sure,' Lihnea told her, rising - 'just give me a second to collect my things.'

**R****IN ****U****NIN**

Rin's stomach rocketed abruptly into his esophagus as the transport lost fifty feet of altitude in as many hundredths of a second; unconcerned, he keyed through to the next page on the dataslate he'd found lying loose - unbeknownst to the cargomaster, he was sure - in the eC.89's passenger compartment, loaded with, among other periodicals, the most recent issue of the _Defense Force Times_. He spared the surrounding cabin a quick glance, espying faces that wore varying degrees of consternation. They belonged mostly to younger Soldiers for whom travel by air was still largely novel, and whose heads had no doubt been filled with the horror stories of orbital bombardment near the 'Line; several eyed the fuselage roof uneasily.

Seated nearest the cargo bay, Rin suppressed a weary sigh, grateful simply for a break in the irksome banter which he'd endured for the preceding two hours. As the lone Raven on the flight he'd been left to his own devices, the Soldiers content to vex among themselves sundry topics of mutual interest. For the most part they'd good-naturedly bemoaned their respective woes, which in and of itself didn't trouble Rin; complaining had been the soldier's unofficial pastime since the first organized armies had furthered their states' policies on the field of battle, he imagined, and EGDF troops were no exception.

But as their conversation had continued, it had gradually assumed a more serious mien, shifting slowly from the 'Line to the Interior, and thence, inexorably, to Layered.

'I hear they're thinking 'bout sealing it up again,' a private - Presley or Pressman, as Rin recalled; he hadn't quite caught the terminal syllable over the dull roar of the transport's engine banks - had told the others.

A corporal to his left merely scoffed. 'There's no way Gus's getting through the 'Line that easy,' he said dismissively. 'That'd only be a last resort - even if you _weren't_ full of shit.'

'Still,' a specialist put in, 'it's not a bad contingency - if they sealed the doors and caved in the access tunnels, it'd be damn tough for Gus to get through.'

'Might as well give us our last rites and put a headstone up top, while you're at it,' said a sergeant sitting near the flight deck, the most senior member of their small group; he gave them an admonishing look. 'Gus ain't just gonna move on to the next door when he finds this one locked.'

'Worked before, didn't it?' Pressman - Preston? - pointed out. '_How_ long were we down there? Hundred ninety, two hundred years? Maybe more?'

'That was before we'd pissed off Gus,' the sergeant reminded him.

'How do _we_ know? Maybe the Controller was fighting 'im off the whole time.' Rin's jaw twitched, though he held his peace.

'So where the hell was he when we made it back top-side?' the sergeant demanded. 'And why'd he wait twelve years to do anything about it?'

To his queries, Pressman-or-Presley had no ready answer; he shifted uncomfortably. 'I'm just saying maybe we shouldn't've left is all,' he backpedaled. 'You really think that we'd be stuck on the 'Line, fighting Surface-knows-who all this time, if we were still back in Layered?' Seizing upon this new angle of attack, he tried again. 'You ever think maybe we'd be better off if some _Geist_-humping vigilante hadn't fucked with the system? Maybe we weren't ready, and the Controller knew it.' Rin's temper flared, blood rising toward a slow boil, and he was incensed by the sight of a few nods of agreement around the circle of Soldiers.

They'd spent the next hour or two of the flight debating the manifold merits and demerits of life before E-Day, balancing them against the ills of the present, until the transport's encounter with an air pocket had startled them into momentary silence; a big bruiser of a PFC was the first to break the spell. 'Wish I could get ahold a' that Unin guy...' he rumbled, hands flexing demonstratively; Rin tried not to snort derisively. By no means an expert in hand-to-hand combat, he had nevertheless been in his fair share of scuffles, and knew how to handle himself with fair proficiency; more than that, he had long ago learned to evaluate an opponent's strengths and weaknesses in the spaces between heartbeats, both inside the cockpit and out. The hulking private first class - Dawes, according to the name stitched above his right breast pocket - moved and spoke like a man who'd relied chiefly on his brawn to get him in and out of trouble, rather than any intrinsic skill. Rin, easily twice his age and half his size, would have happily gone a few rounds with him any day of the week.

'It's always a shame when one bad apple ruins it for the rest of us,' the specialist - Giles - agreed.

_One bad apple_, Rin parroted bitterly. Of the myriad epithets to follow his name in the previous decade-and-a-half that was perhaps the most denigrating, blithely relegating his greatest triumph and tragedy to the sphere of the prosaic. _And why?_ Because he'd _inconvenienced_ them by freeing them, because now they had to stand on their own two feet and fight their own battles - because, as absolutely right as they'd been, the Founding Fathers of the United States had been just as absolutely wrong. Life, liberty, even civilization itself - they weren't a privilege or a right, they were a _choice_, which every generation was required to make afresh, and which came at a price.

_Jesus fucking Christ._ His mind spat the obsolescent and vulgar oath with a vehemence dissembled only through necessity and many years of practice by his serene outward façade. Of his forty-six years Rin had spent no few in the company of abject sorrow, known wrenching loss as an intimate friend; for the better part of a decade his only traveling companion aside from _Elysium_ had been a bitter, driving anger. It galled him to hear these people deplore the quotidian mundanities of their trivial existence as though they were the stuff of Homer or Vergil or Lucas. _Absolutely no sense of perspective_, he thought disgustedly. They held with such unshakable conviction to their own suicentric model of the universe that they were too damned myopic to see the fuller context in which they lived out their lives.

For the first time in five generations and more, man could feel the sun on his face and the wind through his hair, could catch the rain on his palm - he'd been given back his birthright, his world, and his future, and the only response that he'd mustered was resounding indifference. At best. _What precious pearls to cast before such ingrate swine..__._ For the thousandth time Rin asked himself if he'd made the right decision, wondered if it had been worth the heavy cost. _Does it even matter, if no one else cares?_

But, as ever, the answer came back unequivocally in the affirmative. There had been a time, once, when man enjoyed dominion over the Earth in her entirety, and even reached out toward the stars. He was confident and purposeful, his horizons alight with possibility, and beheld the future with hungry anticipation, dreaming of what might be.

Yet in self-imposed captivity such had fallen away, his native Surface denied him by the howling, fallout-laden aftermath of his own folly, the future twisted into an object only of dread. Man's capacious intellect and rapacious imagination were artificially curbed by the more primordial exigencies of survival, and blunted against the intangible bars of his prison. Safely ensconced within the closed system of Layered his free will was gradually arrogated by little more than an elaborate assemblage of software and metal, and beneath the Controller's silicon heel the human spirit had come within a hair's breadth of going out.

There was every indication that posterity would remember Rin as the post-Emergence era's Judas - even if that particular name and personage were long vanished from societal memory - but history be damned, then. Man had never been meant to subsist in such a vitiate state, and had it followed its original post-Destruction path to its logical conclusion, humanity would have met its ignoble end in a tomb of its own devising. Rin knew with incontrovertible certainty, as he had fourteen years ago, that in the fullest, most absolute meaning of the word, his actions had been _right_.

'Hey.' He was unceremoniously pulled from his consideration of past events by Dawes, who, evidently, had suddenly remembered the Raven's presence. 'What do _you_ think, old man?' he asked, then, when he failed to elicit an immediate response: 'hey, I'm talking to you - what's your name, dude?'

Rin blew out an irritated breath and let the hand holding the dataslate fall heavily into his lap. _Here we go._ As he fixed the man with a look that a teacher might reserve for a troublesome pupil who ought to know better, in a back corner of his mind he ran a flurry of calculations on angles, distances, and positions in case Dawes were intent on an especially frank exchange of opinions. 'In polite society,' he informed the PFC primly, 'it's generally considered good form to first give one's _own_ name before requesting that another identify himself.' Dawes blinked once, and his advance ground to a puzzled halt; he stood halfway between the 'old man' and their audience, uncertain how to respond, while his compatriots looked on curiously.

'The hell you talking 'bout, man?' he demanded.

'Furthermore,' Rin lectured on, 'referring to one's elders as 'old' is frowned upon in most circles - no matter how true it may or may not be.' He certainly never thought of himself as old in the geriatric sense of the word, though he supposed that from the vantage of Dawes' twenty or so years, forty-six must have seemed an echo of the Middle Ages. The onlooking Soldiers variously wore smirks and grins, plainly amused by their comrade's consternation; there was a flash of gray and white as credits were exchanged and a wager laid. The PFC was looking hard at the Raven before him, apparently trying to conjure up an appropriate response from a repertoire that Rin strongly suspected was limited to 'right hook' and 'left jab'.

'Don't care how old you are,' he managed at last - 'I asked you a question.' He seemed to have found his bearings again, once more in the familiar territory of his rough-and-tumble interpersonal tack.

'In point of fact, Mister' -he made a show of checking the Soldier's desert-pattern utilities- 'Dawes, you asked me three. But for the sake of cordiality, we'll assume that you've introduced yourself properly, in which case' -he inclined his head in greeting- 'I'm Tom Paine.' He reflexively wondered if anyone would catch the reference built into his current alias, though he knew with depressing surety that they would not.

' "Paine", huh.' The PFC cracked his knuckles loudly in what he probably fancied a subtle threat; Rin just rolled his eyes. 'So how 'bout it, dad - y'think we're better off up here than we were down there?' He stabbed a forefinger downward for emphasis.

Rin sighed again, suddenly and thoroughly weary of Dawes. That the Soldier remained oblivious to the oblique insults leveled at him throughout their exchange had, in Rin's perpetually dark mood, made it all the more delightful - but he had better things on which to spend his time than the clubfooted moralizing of the maleducated and the unwashed. It was patently obvious that Dawes was spoiling for a fight, and no matter what the responses that he received to his transparent queries, he would undoubtedly find an excuse to bring the two of them to blows. Tired of the whole affair, and possessed of precious little patience for the PFC's ilk even on a good day, Rin decided to simply bring it to a head, and put an end to the pointless burlesque. The darker impulses firing across the nether realms of his being whispered that he should indulge the Soldier with the spirited debate that he obviously sought, and throttle the man into unconsciousness, but he kept them firmly in check; whatever his quarrel with an ungrateful world, he was still a civilized man who had and would never espouse violence for its own sake. Alone of the manifold creatures of the Earth, man was gifted with the unique capacity to rise above his baser instincts, to hold himself to standards higher than those engraved upon his genetic code - and every single one of the noble ideals for which Rin had fought and suffered would come to naught if he failed to uphold the same morals and ethics by which he expected, however vainly, the rest of humanity to conduct itself.

The silence stretched out as Dawes waited, arms crossed expectantly. 'Whom do you really want to hit?' Rin asked him finally. 'Because it's not me.'

'I...what..?' he floundered, blinking several times in rapid succession; his confident sneer had slipped, and for the second time in as many minutes he found himself at a loss for a suitable rejoinder.

'Do you really think,' Rin pressed, keeping him on an unanticipated defensive footing, 'that we've got that kind of history between us?'

'But, I wasn't-'

'Quite simply, there _is_ no "us",' he concluded matter-of-factly. 'So why have you come marching over here to pound me into hamburger, when I haven't even done anything to you?'

'It was...just...erm, a misunderstanding...' Dawes mumbled, turning to head back to his seat. As he moved out of his line of sight and bills changed hands again, Rin spotted the sergeant beside the small head just aft of the flight deck. How long he'd been standing there, it was hard to tell, though he had evidently watched most of the scene unfold - or at least enough to put the salient pieces together - and when he caught the Raven's eye he gave him a wordlessly appreciative nod; Rin threw him a casual, two-fingered salute. _You're welcome._

He was just rousing the dataslate from the sleep mode into which it had slipped during his 'misunderstanding' with Dawes when the transport banked to port unexpectedly. This time Rin looked up along with the Soldiers, though his eyes landed on the flight deck access hatch rather than the support beams overhead; a curious frown descended from the edges of his mouth as the _Onager_ continued into a wide turn. Securing the slate in a small pocket of cargo netting fastened to the bulkhead next to his seat, he cautiously navigated the deck's artificial slope to the staircase-ladder hybrid that led up to the cockpit. The sergeant - Avery, his uniform announced - clambered up just ahead of him, and pulled open the heavy door.

'What's the word, "Warren"?' he asked the pilot, lapsing into the generic, service-wide nickname for its few warrant officers. But the man motioned for silence and cocked his head to the side, listening closely to his headset; to his right, the copilot looked over his shoulder at the two men filling the accessway.

'Gus's just hit Four-Thirteen Forward hard,' he told them grimly, jerking a thumb in the direction of their previous heading.

'Damn,' Avery muttered to himself - perhaps recalling friends stationed their, Rin guessed. But something about the copilot's phraseology caught his ear.

'He _did_ hit it, or he _is_?' he asked carefully.

'Is,' the man confirmed. 'We've been redirected to the forward airbase at Healey, about ten klicks south.'

'Redirected?' Rin echoed sharply. It made sense, he supposed - trying to land a transport under fire would be foolhardy at best - but... 'How far from Four-Thirteen are we?'

The copilot drew his head back in surprise, then checked one of the multi-function readouts that dotted the cockpit. 'About three klicks, going on four - why?' But Rin scarcely heard him, flying through a quick battery of mathematics and then tapping the pilot's shoulder.

'Have you ever done a combat AC drop?' he asked him.

Now it was the warrant officer's turn to look taken aback. 'A _what_?'

Rin grimaced. _Well that's a 'no'._ But it wasn't the pilot's fault, and he forced down his reflexive ire. The Defense Forces had never embraced the rather involved logistics train that followed Armored Cores wherever they went, nor would their water-tight wartime budget admit of such now; for their money it was more expedient simply to contract Ravens directly, and let the Nests bear the brunt of the logistical pressure. The _Söldner_ were, further, in the extreme minority on the 'Line, and a great many Soldiers had never even met one personally, much less dropped one into a hot LZ. _But, then, the carpenter rarely has the luxury of choosing his own tools._ He would have to make do.

'A combat AC drop,' he repeated - 'although the "combat" descriptor is something of a misnomer, as the delivery vehicle, theoretically, is never exposed to enemy fire.'

The pilot's expression graduated to wholesale bewilderment. 'What the hell are you talking about? If you think-'

'Turn this crate around,' Rin ordered peremptorily. 'I'm going back.' Allowing the warrant officer no chance for argument, he turned and vaulted lithely down the short run of stairs, and was across the passenger cabin and through the aft hatch in a handful of long strides. Even as he jogged to the rear of the cavernous cargo deck, where _Elysium's_ silhouette lay recumbent on a pallet that could have comfortably doubled as a dance floor, Rin's mind was two steps ahead and trying to be in approximately three places at once.

His preflight would have to redefine 'cursory', but that didn't concern him overmuch. He knew every major component and subsystem backwards and forwards - indeed, lacking any genuine expertise in the field of human anatomy, in a very real sense he knew _Elysium's_ body better than he did his own - and he took care to keep them in perfect working order. Further, he actually had a leg up on more pedestrian pilots in the form of the ultra-compact fusion generators that powered his and every other Armored Core. By virtue of the very processes that they were meant to harness, they were never truly deactivated - the fusion reaction could be regulated to a certain extent, quieted or stoked as circumstance demanded, but once initiated it would continue without surcease until the reactor had exhausted its fuel supply at some point three or four lifetimes thence. AC's, concordantly - or MT's, as far as that went - could be brought to full combat readiness with remarkable alacrity, their primary power source already active and standing by.

Sliding awkwardly into the cockpit on his back, Rin's thoughts turned to the decidedly more problematic question of _Elysium's_ actual deployment. Relying heavily, as they did, upon the Raven's unique brand of dispute resolution, most corporations maintained a minor armada of transport aircraft specifically suited to the needs of the sundry Armored Core types that might find their way into company employ. Most obviously, the ungainly and pot-bellied transports were so designed in consideration of the dozen-or-more meter height of the average AC, which, far more often than it was placidly conveyed from airfield to airfield like so much cargo, was dropped, weapons hot, at the edge of a combat zone.

The eC.89's which comprised the balance of the Defense Force's logistical horsepower aloft, however, had been created with no such accommodations in mind. The HLT Program outline which had spurred their development had called for an aircraft capable of effecting medium take-off and sustaining airspeeds of at least four hundred seventy-five knots - both, crucially, with two _Sheridan_ main battle tanks on board. Such were, realistically, the largest and heaviest single pieces of equipment that the EGDF might need quickly ferried about the Surface, as well as the most potent weapons systems in its land-borne arsenal, and its concerns accordingly extended little beyond them.

Thus, it was with scant clearance that _Elysium_, even supine, fit into a cargo bay designed with the _Sheridan's_ two-and-a-half meter height foremost in mind; Rin estimated that, standing on her chest, he could have reached up to plant his palm firmly on the fuselage roof. Considering the relative momenta of aircraft, pallet, and AC in what he was about to attempt, it was a slim margin of error.

While he chivvied along system start-up sequences and preflight diagnostics with one hand, with the other he keyed the comm to the transport's wireless frequency.

'Are you out of your damn mind?' the pilot demanded the moment the connection had been made, irritation and incredulity tumbling across the channel in equal measure.

_Good luck to you too_, Rin thought, rolling his eyes.

'Do you have any idea what it'll do to our trim characteristics if we lose that much weight in mid-air?'

'I imagine that it'll shoot them all to hell, if we don't do it properly,' Rin sent back evenly. The transport would in fact buck like an enraged stallion, if they miscalculated, and he preferred not to dwell on the likely effects of an inopportune air pocket.

'And just how do you plan on touching down as anything other than paste from this altitude?' the pilot wanted to know. 'Strapped to a cargo pallet, no less.'

'How well do you know your plane?' Rin returned pointedly, in response to which the warrant officer could only let out a frustrated breath. 'This isn't exactly my first rodeo, "Warren". The fact of the matter is, that's _my_ posting that Gus is swarming all over down there, and I'd rather not be stuck up here where I'm of no use to anyone. I've made dozens of combat drops, and I can deploy with a minimum of risk to you and your crew - just get me into position and I can handle the rest.' Several long heartbeats passed in silence, and he'd begun to fear that he might have to cut his way through the bay doors and somehow crab-walk _Elysium_ through on her back when the pilot replied.

'So how do we do this thing?' he asked resignedly; Rin gave the scenario a last, flying once-over in his head, then nodded to himself, satisfied.

'Your part is pretty straight-forward,' he told him. 'All that I need you to do is put us on a heading toward Four-Thirteen, open the bay doors, and go into a climb - as steep a climb as you can give me. Once you've got the angle set, I'll need you to hold us steady - and I do mean steady. Then, on my signal, unlock the pallet.' Theoretically, it was more or less a simple inversion of the usual deployment method used on corporate transports. In movies the Raven was always shown hopping out the back of a level-flying aircraft like an oversized, titanium-ceramic composite paratrooper, the plane itself plodding merrily on and evidently unfazed by the drastic realignment of its thrust-to-weight ratio; in all reality, no one had ever been foolhardy enough to attempt such a drop, though Rin could well imagine the ensuing disaster. Standard deployment SOP in fact called for the company transport to ascend to a serviceable altitude and then go into a steep dive; at the extreme aft of the cargo bay the bottom of the fuselage was designed to depress as the angle of descent increased, keeping the Armored Core thereon standing upright. At the appropriate moment, the AC would jump free, lighting off its thrusters at a safe distance and angling itself into an ever shallower dive that, if executed properly, would put pilot and AC down into a hard and fast skim across the - hopefully - level terrain of the landing zone. For its part, the transport's trajectory served to mitigate the sudden loss of mass, which, if anything, reduced somewhat its ground-ward speed.

The eC.89, regrettably, did not come so equipped, requiring a rather less elegant approach. The hard climb would serve much the same meliorative purpose as a dive, when _Elysium_ fell free, although encased within the fuselage as she was, she ran the risk of slamming into the transport sides or roof in the second or two that it would take to clear them. If the pilot were unable to keep his plane locked into a constant angle of ascent, they would all drill a rather spectacular crater into the desert floor below.

'Have you got all that?' Rin asked him.

'Head for Four-Thirteen, bay doors, steady climb, signal,' the warrant officer paraphrased. 'Got it - but how will you clear the pallet once you're out?'

Rin arched an eyebrow and cocked his head to the side, drawing an uneasy breath; that was actually the chanciest part of his proposition. 'The clamps on these things are only intended to keep the load from shifting around during flight - they were never really meant to hold cargo against its will,' he said, with more levity than he truly felt. 'Once I've dropped free I should just be able to break out of them.' _Or this'll be the shortest contract on the books..._

'If you say so,' the pilot told him dubiously; Rin could feel his skepticism radiating from the cockpit as the _Onager_ banked. 'Well, we're back on course, if you still want to go through with this; I'll go on record as saying this a really fucking awful idea.'

'Duly noted.' He gave his flight harness a final check. 'Ready when you are.'

'Your funeral.' Beyond _Elysium's_ angular feet the main cargo bay door levered down into position; digitally recreated afternoon light spilled into her cockpit. 'Beginning ascent,' the pilot reported, falling back into the clipped speech native to military transmissions. As the _Onager_ nosed up into a climb, Rin's eyes fell in and out of focus on the head-forward display's altimeter, alternately checking its progress and running calculations through his head. Thanks to the backwards fashion in which he had to deploy, he would actually wind up a good deal higher than he'd prefer when he dropped, but there was nothing to be done for it. The mighty FLEET thrusters that _Elysium_ boasted were the most powerful ever designed for an AC chassis - as long as he kept his eye on the ball they would, in theory, be more than equal to the task of shading his freefall toward the controlled descent that he would, in turn, level off into a brisk skim as he touched down. 'All right, this is the best angle I can give you without stalling,' the pilot told him. 'Hope it's enough.'

'You ready for this, old girl?' Rin murmured softly, gloved hand caressing one of the consoles. _Elysium's_ nominal readouts supplied a mute affirmative.

'Just tell me when, Raven.'

Rin paused to reflect momentarily on the ironically grand and, above all, conspicuous entrance that he would make, then dismissed the thought with a shake of his head. _Ah well._ He blew out a steeling breath and clamped his jaw firmly shut, lest he crack a tooth or mangle his own tongue when the pallet fell free.

'Mark.'

_So much for keeping a low profile._

**G****ILT ****R****IVIN**

It was oddly peaceful here. Stretched out before _Blue Asgard's_ titanium countenance, Gilt lay half recumbent among the blue-gray contours of her sleek Mirage core, back inclined against the curves of the bullet-shaped radiator fairing and a book propped on his knees. The hangar's massive main doors stood open, and through the southern entrance golden afternoon sunlight spilled in, setting the southeast quarter of the yawning bay ablaze as a strong breeze wafted amidst the spider web of catwalks above. A dozen meters below his perch Gilt could hear Outpoint's small army of mechanics and techs going about their business, the sounds of tools and heavy equipment and curses and ribald humor mingling with the more distant rumble of the EGDF's ubiquitous five-ton trucks passing by outside, all woven into the familiar aural tapestry of life at their modest forward outpost. Anders and Tyre, he knew, had always found Outpoint too noisy for their liking, more accustomed, as they were, to the subdued efficiency of corporate facilities and their respective Raven's Nests, though he himself thought the bustle rather reassuring, in its way, a tacit declaration that all was well.

And in truth, save for such time as he spent with Lihnea, he never felt more content than he did with _Blue Asgard_, who was, after so many years, almost more a home than his quarters or even his Roane apartment. Despite a posting that was, in all likelihood, the most dangerous on or under the Earth, Gilt was perfectly at ease passing a quiet summer afternoon with a good book, for all the world as though he were anywhere but the heart of a war zone.

As he turned a page he became aware of footsteps on the elevated walkway that flanked _Blue Asgard_ at (her) elbow-level, a flat, hollow clank marking their progress to the AC's back. The sound of rubber soles negotiating the narrow access ladder that rose between her thrusters confirmed the identity of Gilt's visitor - no one else would have bothered with the climb - and he looked up to see Lihnea picking her way expertly around the left side of _Blue Asgard's_ head.

'Hey,' he said, face brightening in pleasant surprise; she had mentioned over breakfast that she hoped to finally see to her telescope's calibration that afternoon, since Gus' inordinately docile mood the past week or so had left everyone with fewer demands on their time than usual, though Gilt hadn't expected her to finish with the instrument quite so early.

'Hi, Gilt,' she smiled back warmly, coming to a halt near his outstretched legs and dusting her hands off. 'I thought I might find you up here.'

Gilt gave her a self-deprecating grin, and moved book, arms, and head in an elaborate shrug equating to a non-verbal 'of course'; _Blue Asgard_ had always been one of his favorite places to wile away his rare leisure hours. 'Just catching up on some reading,' he explained unnecessarily, 'now that the _Geister_ have decided to be so accommodating.'

Lihnea folded her arms and regarded him from behind a good-natured smirk that somehow only made her prettier. ' "Catch up" typically implies that you're _behind_ - I think you've gone through more books than everyone else at Outpoint put together.' She stepped into the narrow space between Gilt and _Blue Asgard's_ chin, and he slid aside to make more room for her, bracing his right leg against the option-housing on the left side of the core to hold himself in place. Lihnea settled back beside him, head pillowed on his arm.

'_Verfall und Untergang des Römischen Reiches_,' she read off, plucking the book from his hand and examining the title; she was careful to keep his place, holding a slender finger between the pages. 'A little light summer reading?' she teased, hefting the weighty tome demonstratively and rolling her head to the side to fix him with an amused look.

Gilt flipped his free hand palm-up in lieu of another shrug before letting it fall back to its easy resting place across his abdomen. 'Something like that,' he said, returning her smile. 'It's been too long since I've had the chance to go through his History - it's one of the all-time greats of the field. Of course, it loses just a _little_ something of Gibbon's eloquence in German' -he lifted his other hand from her shoulder for a moment, moving it vaguely in the direction of the book where Lihnea held it- 'but best of luck finding one in his native English anymore.' As far as historians were able to determine, English seemed to have been the _de facto_ lingua franca of the pre-Destruction world, yet by an odd twist of fate the balance of surviving scholarship had been penned by German authors, giving rise to a nigh universal bilingualism among what remnants of humanity had sheltered in Layered. In a number of cases key texts as written in their native tongue had been lost entirely, surviving only in translation, with many others bought in the original language of their authors only at great cost.

'Maybe they'll start printing them again, now that we're back on the Surface,' Lihnea offered, tucking the open volume beneath _Blue Asgard's_ 'jaw'; she crossed an arm over her chest to her shoulder, laying her hand absently on Gilt's. 'We've got all the trees that we could ever want, up here.' Of all the demands on the limited natural resources of Layered, few had been as pressing as those placed upon what little could be grown. If magazines had been expensive commodities, then physical books had come at a dearer price still, production of the less profitable non-essential simply having never been resumed after a shell-shocked mankind began rebuilding some semblance of his shattered society. The sheer, inexorable practicality of virtual media, moreover, had flatly obviated their more tangible antecedents.

'We do at that,' Gilt agreed. The Interior alone boasted timbered acres in their untold thousands, to say nothing of what might lie beyond ghost country, and the long years of subterranean exile had weaned human civilization of any dependence upon lumber that it might once have had; such would, in all truth, be required for nothing else of any consequence. 'I wonder if there's still a functional printing press out there anywhere...' he mused, half to himself; Lihnea nudged his ribs with a playful elbow.

'I'm sure you're not the _only_ one interested in the past,' she assured him with an impish grin - 'there must be at least a few others out there...like you.' She very nearly pulled off a convincingly neutral tone, though her large brown eyes fairly shone with mirth.

'Like me, huh,' Gilt repeated with a grin of his own, arching a mock-suspicious eyebrow while his free hand crept toward her unprotected side. 'People who waste their time on the past, you mean.' Lihnea managed a good affectation of wide-eyed innocence.

'Hey, you're the one who said it, not m-!' The last word of her light-hearted remonstrance skewed abruptly into a yelp of surprise as Gilt's hand found its mark, right between ribcage and hip where he knew she was most ticklish.

'This from our up-and-coming young astronomer over here,' he countered with a laugh, shifting focus to her flat stomach as she giggled and kicked. 'Obviously the most _practical_ of vocations in a culture that was trapped underground for almost two centuries...' He tried to withdraw his hand too late, and in one lightning-fast motion she trapped it between hers; for someone who wasn't a professional pilot, she had unaccountably good reflexes.

'Well in case you hadn't noticed,' Lihnea reminded him helpfully, her breathing slowly returning to normal, 'we've been _above_ ground for almost fifteen years, now.' She lowered her hands warily to her midriff, still sandwiched around his.

'Is _that_ what that is?' Gilt asked in theatrical disbelief, throwing a glance out the open hangar doors. 'Well how about that - I _wondered_ why Layered had gotten so bright lately...'

'Missed that giant ball of flaming hydrogen in the sky, did you?' she laughed. Her small hands had relaxed their hold on his, though they remained enclosed about it contentedly; after she made an unsuccessful attempt to blow aside an errant lock of hair, Gilt levered his other hand up to brush it gently away from her eyes.

'I just figured the Controller was malfunctioning again.'

Lihnea gave an amused sniff, otherwise letting the seconds draw out into comfortable silence. Most, Gilt knew, found conversational lulls awkward, their unwritten rules of personal interaction evidently prescribing the maintenance of idle banter at all costs as the preferred antidote - nor was he himself wholly immune to such sentiments, at times. But if he and Lihnea had never wanted for easy and steady verbal reciprocation in their discourse, then neither had they ever been averse, so far as he could tell, to the natural ebb and flow of the same, each happy enough to simply enjoy the presence of the other.

A cool breeze washed over Raven and Operator, and out of the corner of his eye Gilt studied Lihnea's flawless features, for the thousandth time turning over in his mind the inscrutable inner workings of fortune that had brought them together. That their pairing had been largely accidental, her assignment to Gilt spurred only by the last-minute departure from _Rabenheim_ of her original prospective client, frankly terrified him. After the tumultuary events surrounding E-Day had handily torn his life asunder, the only family he had ever known plucked irrevocably from his grasp, something within him had simply...shut down. For nigh on a decade he had merely lurched, purposeless, from day to day, task to task, not truly miserable so much as numb, insensibly deadened even to the perception of his own dissatisfaction; the incomparable joy of the written word, of plumbing the historical depths of the world before him and expanding his intellectual horizons, had retreated to a remote and somehow muted fastness that frustrated even his best efforts at investment.

_But Lihnea..._ Though he had pondered the question at some length, Gilt remained unable to fully quantify what it was, exactly, within their respective personalities that had conspired to forge so close a bond between them - all he could say with any degree of surety was that they were almost perfectly complimentary, in some way. The prospect of a new Operator he had met with the same resounding apathy that had theretofore been the outstanding hallmark of his post-Emergence existence, but within the space of their first encounter, whether something within him had unconsciously reached out to her, or something within her to him, some long-dead part of him had come alive with a start.

It wasn't just that she was beautiful, kind, and intelligent to put his agile mind to shame - other women whom he had known boasted similar, if not identical, virtues. Rather, it was a certain, ineffable balance that she struck between them, and the kindred spirit that he saw when he looked into her eyes - not merely sympathetic, but suffused with genuine empathy. And more. If pressed to characterize their relationship, Gilt would be hard-put to yield anything like a precise answer - neither purely friendship nor romance as such, it encompassed the best elements of both and surpassed the depth and strength of either, and in the less rational marches of his mind he lived within the shadow of an almost superstitious fear of any attempt at definition, lest, like a quantum wave form, it collapse under the weight of his scrutiny.

But that was appropriate enough, he supposed, as it was often the most important elements of life that were the most elusive. Truth, love, morality, consciousness, self - philosophers had fielded countless explications of each, almost all of them at variance with one another, and many of them starkly incompatible.

He gazed at Lihnea fondly, listening to the rhythmic sound of her breathing as she lay snuggled against him, dozing lightly; the unpredictable tempo of the war had taxed the defenders on the 'Line heavily, Operators not the least of all. No, he doubted that he could truly capture the essence of their relationship with any single, narrow descriptor, but he knew that she was, without equivocation, the best thing that had ever happened to him; even now, his heart still seized up at the thought of how easily they might never have met.

Moving carefully so as not to disturb her, Gilt tilted his head to kiss her brow gently. 'Mmm,' she responded drowsily, a faint smile drifting across her lips; her eyes blinked open, and found his. 'What was that for?'

'Nothing,' he told her softly, giving her shoulders a gentle, affectionate squeeze. 'Everything.'

**R****IN**** U****NIN**

As _Elysium_ plummeted through the lower reaches of the troposphere, Rin silently cursed Murphy for his intransigence. In the course of his record-setting preflight, his mind occupied with the business of leapfrogging two or three steps ahead, he had neatly overshot the critical step of terrain assessment. Under normal circumstances such concerns would have been addressed during the latter phases of operational planning, the Raven's descent corridor selected following a careful review and topographical analysis of whatever reconnaissance data were ready to hand - most typically satellite imagery in various spectra, prior to Gus' establishment of a beachhead in low Earth orbit, though aerial photography, despite the escalating risk of deploying aircraft near the 'Line, had proven an able surrogate when _Geist_ hunter-killers roamed too freely. But the simple exigency of surveying his landing zone, usually conducted by the contracting corporation's S-3 section or nearest analog, had fallen unnoticed into the dim attentional interstices between Rin's haste to deploy before the reluctant transport pilot changed his mind, and his rather acute desire to bring _Elysium_ online without overloading key systems or overlooking any malfunction that might manifest itself at an inopportune - and almost certainly fatal - moment; it was only once the 'Core had slipped her fetters and left the cargo pallet to its fate that Rin, watching the mid-HFD altimeter cycle with stomach-turning celerity, had belatedly bent his thoughts to the small matter of touching down in a non-liquid state.

_Oh yeah. That._

Never dreaming that he might deploy from the _Onager_, he had paid the land below little mind, though at the aircraft's optimal cruising altitude all but the largest geographical features were indiscernible regardless. For the first two thousand vertical meters of his drop he had held to the attenuated hope that the question would ultimately prove moot, and that the mostly flat high desert in which much of the 'Line lay situate might work in his favor. But as the onrushing Earth resolved into finer detail, he began picking out the unmistakable interplay of light and dark, a lethal chiaroscuro of rock gardens, dry riverbeds, and gullies that added to an already sketchy deployment a number of unforeseen complications. _Well, only if you think of death as a 'complication', I suppose_, Rin thought with black humor - _it would probably do wonders for simplifying the problems in my life._

As altimeter metrics continued streaming up the display, he called up a little-used feature of _Elysium's_ onboard navigation suite, overlaying the forward viewscreen with a ghostly, orange wireframe representation of his projected course. Fingers flitting across control panels, he keyed a magnification subroutine for a closer look at the area where his 'Core estimated they would make landfall.

_Fuck._

Not a man given to excessive recurrence to vulgarity, so visceral a curse he nevertheless felt singularly apropos to the terminus of his current trajectory. Across an area of at least two score square kilometers the Earth lay broken and rubble-strewn, jagged arroyos and boulders the size of houses littering the ground to mark the aftermath of some barely remembered geological tantrum, into the very heart of which nightmare his course would presently set him down. Perfectly negotiable at more sensible velocities, its assay would be more or less tantamount to suicide in concert with the six hundred kilometer-per-hour landings that were typical of HALF jumps - even one so improvised as Rin's - at which speeds even the best human reaction times would be found sorely wanting.

Thruster-equipped though they were, Armored Cores had never been designed for aerial operation in any meaningful sense, their boosters intended more than anything else to augment their terrestrial motility. The high-energy plasma which afforded them the benefit of such large-delta-v maneuvering was drawn directly from the carefully regulated stellar mimicry at the heart of every AC powerplant, the enormous energies inherent to the fusion by-product itself shepherded and focused by a series of layered magnetic fields, and channeled thence through what thruster assemblies a given machine might call upon. But the generators, however powerful, were optimized for long-term efficiency, and lacked the requisite stamina to sustain the rigors of true, protracted flight. There wasn't an Armored Core in the world with anything like the capacitor necessary to make a fully powered descent from a launch point of several thousand meters - but then, the Raven would be little served by such anyway. The purpose of the high-altitude, low-firing jump was in fact to minimize insertion time, and thereby limit exposure to potential enemy fire, while in the same clean stroke accommodating the AC's unique performance profile. Absent the standing energy reserves to match retrograde acceleration to terminal velocity, it was in any case far more economical to instead redirect one's accrued momentum along more profitable vectors. The exact parameters varied with 'Core specifications, but as a general rule, between the one and two thousand meter mark the Raven would initiate a hard, controlled thruster burn oriented on a roughly horizontal axis, firing additional bursts as required to push them toward a less severe angle of attack - with proper technique, the maneuver would effect a smooth transition from free-falling tumble to a skimming landing at something approximating overboost speeds.

Absolutely key, however, was a clear and level landing zone at the bottom of the descent corridor. Once they had touched down, judicious application of counter-thrust or, failing that, the simple operation of kinetic friction, would be sufficient to bring pilot and machine to a safe, if bumpy, halt within a few hundred meters. But determining the point of landfall within a margin of error measured in anything less than half a kilometer was an effective impossibility, relevant variables changing from one instant to the next - thermoclines, air pockets, head- or tailwinds, or any of a dozen other atmospheric phenomena could wreak merry havoc with anything better than the vaguest of predictions. Rin figured that he had maybe an even-money chance of coming down in a serviceably open tract amidst the sedimentary obstacle course below, and successfully decelerating to live to tell the tale - but that also meant there was at least a fifty percent probability that any recovery team would need a vacuum cleaner to pick his remains out of the wreckage.

_And a goddamned divining rod to find them._

Thoughts racing very nearly in violation of the laws of relativity, Rin evaluated and discarded potential solutions to the problem before him two and three at a time. In a distant and just then little-used recess of his faculties, he couldn't help but marvel at the agility of the human mind under duress, which was miraculously able to marshal the raw processing power to consider in flying succession the various merits and demerits of his available options, upbraid itself for the oversight which had precipitated their necessity in the first place, recall an article that he had once read about the psychological perception of time's passage under just such circumstances, and at the same time ponder its own peerless multitasking capabilities. And somewhere behind and to the left of it all he could feel the combination of pride and smug self-satisfaction fanning the perpetually smoldering embers of a bitter loathing buried so deeply and inextirpably that he knew he would carry it to his grave. The powers of human cognition were far and away the mightiest tool in the species' inventory, and perhaps the greatest of all the Earth's innumerable wonders - though invisible to the world at large, his fractional display of its full potency he took as quiet, personal vindication of his conviction that the Controller had been not only the product of one of man's gravest miscalculations, but manifestly unnecessary.

But if Rin justly reveled in humanity's claim to the ablest known natural computer, then he had to admit that in his present predicament its more basic programming shaded further than he would have liked toward a genuine impediment to its higher-order operations. For, despite his mastery of powered flight man remained an indisputably terrestrial creature, and the history of aviation occupied too brief an interval of Homo sapiens' two hundred fifty millennia of existence to have made any measurable inroads against its most fundamental hardwiring. The unmistakable fluttering sensation of internal organs in freefall was inextricably bound to the deeply subconscious, almost _biological_ perception of imminent peril, and though Rin had never been one susceptible to the frantic wiles of panic, he couldn't deny the difficulty intrinsic to clear and rational thought when the most primordial of his survival instincts were hammering urgently against his medulla oblongata, insisting in no uncertain terms that something was Very Wrong.

But if his conscious mind could bear four demands on its time, then it handle five, and he remanded the exigent yowling of his mental alarm klaxons to the care of less occupied quarters of his awareness. The multi-function timer at the top of his forward display reported with sedate, almost incongruous calm that seventy-seven seconds had elapsed since his impromptu egress from the _Onager_, and an altimeter reading of approximately twenty-nine hundred meters confirmed that he was seventeen seconds from initial thruster burn, and about fifty-three from a spectacular demise if he didn't find an alternative landing site quick, fast, and in a hurry.

_Come on, fossil_, he berated himself, _pick up the pace._ Three seconds slipped by accompanied by seven discarded solutions, each requiring time or a nuclear engineering degree that he didn't have, or the numinous intervention of Olympus on his behalf.

_0080_, the timer informed him.

In fourteen seconds he would pass two thousand meters, at which point HALF landing procedure called for him to light off _Elysium's_ thrusters and make for the designated LZ, such as it was. But with the rocky expanse ahead a well and truly impracticable option, that meant instead that he had just fourteen seconds to come up with an alternate descent vector.

He could kick her boosters in early, he supposed, though he knew it was too late for such a paltry increase in delta-v to make any real difference; had he known earlier, or if _Elysium_ had carried Mirage's supplementary thrusters on her back in place of her twin vertical missile launchers, there was a slim chance that he could have feathered them along and managed to clear the worst of the terrain, though even then he wasn't sure that she had the energy reserves to make it work.

If he hadn't already passed into the airspace above the wreck of a landscape below he might, conversely, have tried to come down short of it, but a successful HALF jump hinged on the buildup of a utible counter-force to gravity's pull, and in all likelihood the attempt would only have killed his forward momentum altogether, leaving him to simply drop like a rock.

_0086._

The small voice at the back of his mind put in unhelpfully, _Fuck!_

His choice of lateral courses was just as poor. Jabbing a finger into a touch keypad with more force than was strictly required, he deactivated the viewscreen's magnification algorithms and plotting functions, and cast a baleful eye to his ten and two o'clock. At every visible point of the compass he was greeted by the same sight, and for the life of him he didn't-

_Wait._

Ahead on his right, just emerging from the haphazard shadow of the desert floor he could see a shallow, stony chine, at the bottom of which a broad river meandered its way in something like a northeastern direction. The path that it followed thither had long ago been subjected to the bludgeoning of geological happenstance, its bed frequently zigging north or zagging south, but it also flowed straight and true for kilometers at a time, and with a little creative maneuvering and a lot of luck...

Rin reacted on a level wholly apart from conscious thought, hands a blur over the cockpit's compact consoles as he reoriented _Elysium_ and threw her into a savage thruster burn, the interval between reflex and action all but syncopating entirely. Weight returned like a blunt kick to the stomach as g-forces pushed him deep into the shock couch, and as his AC blazed a searing blue trail across the sky his cerebral cortex struggled to catch up with its more impulse-driven counterpart.

After all was said and done, his present gambit might very well prove every bit as suicidal as the prospect of setting down amidst the debris-covered country below, but at least it offered realistically quantifiable odds of success. Contrary to the inveterate cinematic propensity for rampant inaccuracy, the water in which his revised landing site consisted would do nothing to cushion his landing - given the apparently placid pace of its current and the consequent surface tension, in fact, contact would be more closely akin to touching down on lanicrete. Rin was counting on it.

If he could coax a sufficiently shallow angle out of his approach, and hold enough thruster power in reserve to keep _Elysium_ on the straight and narrow, then he might just be able to manage a series of controlled skips along the water, the river serving to further arrest their progress after they had shed enough velocity to break the surface. Once halted it would be a simple matter to make the short, booster-assisted hop above-water and up to the top of the dale, whence they could carry on with the business - almost forgotten in their harrowing plunge - of completing the rest of their journey to 413 Forward.

Or, the impact would tear the AC's legs from her body and shatter her core like an eggshell, consigning man and machine to a watery, unmarked grave. But it was the only game in town, and they had long since passed the point of no return - it was the river or bust. Rin wondered for an idle heartbeat if it had a name.

_Elysium's_ capacitor dropped below fifty percent as the MFT marched resolutely past the one hundred two second mark, and Rin eased off the throttle, shifting to shorter, more conservative bursts; he inched closer to the HFD, unconsciously straining against his crash harness toward the horizontal vector that he needed. He could see that it would be close, and the landing - the 'watering'..? - was going to be the definition of touch-and-go, but the 'Core _was_ leveling out, and off on his mental sidelines their odds of walking away from the whole affair edged up a few percentage points.

The capacitor, though, was a source of some concern. As gently as he caressed the controls, the FLEET's were still consuming power more quickly than the generator could replenish it, and while that was hardly unexpected - no powerplant with a sensible configuration had a charge rate that could ever hope to outstrip the demands of normal thruster usage - then Rin needed the energy flow just a touch closer to the zero-sum ideal.

_Elysium_ sank within four score meters of the river, and its surface waters flash-boiled to vapor, throwing up geysers of super-heated steam in her wake. Rin's vision, Rin's _world_, had contracted to a narrow field that encompassed the data on his heads-forward display, and the riverine canyon that lay beyond. He no longer had time for calculation or even second thoughts, and was piloting purely on instinct; any sense of where his gloved hands ended and _Elysium_ began had fallen away, and he felt, rather than knew, that he had just one ace left to play.

The auxiliary boosters affixed to his Armored Core's angular shoulders, selected in the stead of the more customary missile defenses that the balance of designs favored, were, in effect, immensely powerful RCS thrusters. Built to fire only in single, milliseconds-long bursts, they provided a high-g supplement to the AC's acceleration for a relatively small cost, considering their output, and were especially well-suited to making rapid course corrections. Rin stared ahead only half seeing the virtual report of _Elysium's_ viewscreens, even his breath left forgotten and undrawn as he waited for the right moment, thumb poised over the extension activation stud. In consequence of their small size the auxiliary thrusters lacked the more sophisticated heat-dissipation apparatus of the 'Core herself, and required several seconds to cool down between firings; he would have only one shot.

An artificial thunderclap pealed across the seething river surface as plasma flared from _Elysium's_ shoulders, jerking her meters-per-second rate of descent back to almost nothing. 'Yes!' Rin breathed to himself, though even as the exultant interjection left his mouth he was steeling himself, preparing for the impendent ordeal of actually making his unorthodox landing work.

Falling had been easy. _Now for the hard part._

If he were to be honest, Rin would have to admit that he hadn't been completely sure what to expect - to the best of his wide-ranging knowledge, no Raven had ever courted disaster quite so brazenly as he did now. But while he had known that what he attempted would be difficult, he was still unprepared for just how hard his 'Core kicked. According to the streamlined information that the data-filters sifted for display on the HFD, he was moving at six hundred twelve kilometers per hour, and when _Elysium_ bounced off the water for the first time she bucked like a wild horse; to Rin it felt almost like the shock of a missile impact without the explosion and shrapnel. He had lost all perception of time, and was aware only of his struggle to hold the AC steady and keep the well-meaning corrections of her auto-balancer at bay. Under normal conditions the AUBAL, kissing cousin to the fly-by-wire systems employed by air-to-air fighters, worked in tandem with an Armored Core's vernier thrusters, internal gyro sensors, and limb actuators to maintain equilibrium, fine-tuning its movements decisecond to decisecond. On the ground it ensured that weight remained distributed evenly whether the AC were standing, walking, running, or skimming; in the air it maintained a forward-leaning orientation that would both keep the machine from pitching end over end while its main thrusters were in operation, and strike a useful balance between vertical lift and horizontal airspeed.

But if he was to have any hope of bringing her down in one piece, then Rin needed _Elysium_ inclined in precisely the opposite direction. In general, while Crest parts lacked the stylistic flair of their competitors they were stolid and dependable, and could stand up to all manner of unseemly abuse - but traveling at half the speed of sound, the kinetic shear at the point of impact would, Rin estimated, rip through _Elysium's_ hip joints as though they were aluminum foil, if they were left to bear the brunt of the landing trauma. But if she struck at a rearward inclination then the force would be distributed the length of her body, instead of focused on its weakest connective structures.

He was somewhat more prepared the second time, though he still felt it in his marrow. _Elysium_ planed across the waves, hurling miniature tsunamis against the scree covering the shores to either side of her, and steadily slowing now that the FLEET's had fallen silent; tiny blue-white tongues of plasma issued from the verniers on her legs and core, Rin compensating manually for the discordant collision of opposing forces. She skipped across the face of the waters thrice more before they were able to take hold of her, and, throwing a great freshwater plume tens of meters into the air, she sank beneath her ersatz runway. Rin winced as her left foot glanced off a submerged stone with a resounding bang, though for the most part the riverbed was mercifully devoid of large obstructions. _Elysium_ gouged a pair of precise, parallel furrows into the soft mud, coming at last to a strangely gentle stop after ten more meters. An almost startling peace settled over the cockpit, and murky currents eddied lazily about the abruptly quiescent AC. Rin let out the breath that he'd been holding for the last fifteen or twenty years of their descent, and relaxed his death grip on the control stick and throttle column. He had actually pulled it off.

_Well I'll be damned._

**D****EK**** A****VERY**

Avery's still-lit cigar tumbled from his lips as his jaw fell slack. 'Holy shit...' he breathed, staring in hard disbelief through the pair of binoculars he held pressed against one of the _Onager's_ narrow windows. During his teens he had grown into his father's love of ornithology, and even after he'd enlisted he had found time to pursue the interest, curiously well-adapted, as it was, to long humps and dull postings where the standing order of the day was usually to hurry up and wait. The EGDF maintained an infantry corps as a matter of course, but no one had ever seen any sign of human life in ghost country that hadn't come from behind the 'Line to begin with, and there was precious little for a rifleman to do on the frontier aside from the odd 'rise-ward scouting foray and generally trying to make himself useful. His binoculars - a high-quality pair made by Zeiss, not one of the shitty, lowest-bidder models that the Defense Force issued on occasion - had early on become a permanent piece of kit, as had the small journal in which he kept sketches and notes on what avian life he encountered on the 'Line. The field was actually coming back in a big way as zoölogists tried to piece together a coherent picture of post-Destruction wildlife, and Avery had given serious thought to making a proper book out of his observations once his four years were up; every now and again he would happen across a species that he hadn't yet seen recatalogued, confirming that at least one more had managed to survive the end of the world, and he knew that his notes would make a valuable contribution, once he had the time to organize them into something presentable.

For the moment, however, his interest had afforded him a ready means of tracking the progress of the obviously unhinged Raven. It had taken him a minute to figure out precisely what was happening, and by the time Avery had put the whole thing together and rifled through his duffel bag for his binoculars - and then nearly dropped both as the _Onager_ pulled into a hard climb - the damned fool was already diving out of the cargo bay. He had never harbored much of an interest in either Ravens or their vaunted Armored Cores, generally taking a dim view of the one and ignoring the other, and he boasted only the loosest conversance with their capabilities - but he knew enough to recognize an act of stark lunacy when he saw one. He had no idea what this Paine had been thinking, pulling a stunt like that, even if he had to concede a certain grudging admiration for his apparent eagerness to get into the fight. Not that Avery had figured he would live that long.

For about the first minute-and-a-half nothing much had happened, and after breaking free of the cargo pallet the Armored Core had simply gone about the business of apparently falling to its death. But then its thrusters had begun firing, and it had angled off toward the northeast. Tracking ahead of him Avery hadn't been able to tell right away where exactly Paine was heading, but over the course of the next half-minute or so his intent had become shockingly, crystal clear: the stupid moron was going to try landing right in the fucking river.

The other Soldiers clustered around him had started laying odds as soon as he'd relayed that minor revelation, though Avery himself had only looked on in mute suspense. He knew that water was nowhere near as forgiving as movies made it out to be, and he'd fully expected to see the Armored Core just come apart as soon as it hit.

But it hadn't. He didn't know what kind of voodoo magic Paine was using, but he'd actually _skipped_ the damn thing off the water like a Surface-forsaken _rock_.

'What is it, Sergeant?' Giles asked him, eying his cigar where it had fallen to the deck. 'What happened - did he make it?' Avery's mouth moved experimentally a couple of times before he could find something to say.

'Holy shit,' he finally repeated, binoculars riveted to the rough area of the river where Paine had gone under. 'He actually pulled it off - at least, he's still in one piece, far as I can tell.' _Are AC's water-tight?_ he wondered. _Must be_, he decided a half-second later, _or he wouldn't've tried the river._

'Fuck me,' Giles said in subdued wonderment. 'I didn't think he'd actually do it. He must be one hell of a pilot - just where did that guy _come_ from, anyway?'

**R****IN**** U****NIN**

The surface of the anonymous ghost country river roiled and heaved for an instant before it erupted into a boiling spray, seeming almost to shatter as _Elysium's_ gray-blue form burst from the depths. Ascending a column of azure flame to arroyo's edge, water cascading from the planes and angles of her body in a hundred miniature waterfalls, she took a handful of steps and came to a stop, as though getting her bearings.

Within, on the navigation sub-panel inset to his left, Rin called up a map of the surrounding region, taking the lay of the virtual land. _Huh._ While making his descent, his minor preoccupation with the matter of his continued survival had kept his attention on a decidedly short leash, but he saw now that he had touched down closer to 413 Forward than he thought. Running flat-out, and in a straight line across level ground, _Elysium_ could theoretically cover the intervening twenty-three kilometers in about eleven-and-a-half minutes, though in practice Rin knew the tortured landscape would require somewhat more creative negotiation.

Spurring his Armored Core through an easy walk and into something like a slow jog, he scanned the broken Earth ahead for oases of suitably clear terrain, mentally plotting a staccato course northward. For a conventional land vehicle it would have been a task of an hour at least to make its way through to more open country, but the Raven's Armored Core had ever walked a unique, twilit line between the realm of the terrestrial and the aerial, one foot planted firmly in each; as often as not Rin viewed his surroundings less in terms of linear routes than of discrete landing points, the interchange between the two comprising a complex, multi-layered mental grid that overlay his internal realization of the three-dimensional environment. A part of him wondered idly if frogs might not have perceived the world in a similar way.

_Elysium_ accelerated to a run and launched into a series of bounding, thruster-assisted leaps, streaks of dirty glass cooling in her wake as she cleared half a kilometer of desert at a time; Rin's mind once again raced ahead, this time flying through a crash review of everything that he had ever read or heard of _Geist_ military hardware. There had been rumblings of a major influx of new data, though the updated dossiers that were supposed to have been disseminated along the 'Line were unavailable outside Defense Force circles; the non-classified brief that he'd been given on his new posting, mostly a short adumbration of its force disposition, contact history, and best-guess threat projections, evidently hadn't merited its inclusion. That left him with little more than the hearsay and scattered rumors that he had collected over the past two years, all of which amounted to a personal catalogue of depressing brevity.

But, no matter - they would be formally introduced soon enough. As _Elysium_ skirted a waist-high mound of lithic rubble the contours of the land began to smooth out, and the cockpit audio feeds relayed the faint, bass report of distant explosions rolling acros the high desert. Peering hard through the heat-induced shimmer of the dry, calid air, Rin could just descry a cluster of dark gray at the edge of useful visibility, demarcated by lines too straight to have issued from any natural geological process. A bright, yellow-orange light flashed through the distortion, a low rumble like faraway thunder following close on its heels a few seconds later.

Rin kicked _Elysium_ into a full sprint, and the AC's sensor eye briefly flared a refulgent teal as he brought her weapon systems up to full combat readiness. A gloved hand hovered over the comm panel for a moment, unsure of the precise frequencies 413 Forward Command and Control would be using to coördinate its forces. After a second's debate he settled for a broadband transmission - it would announce his presence to anyone or -thing with a wireless tranceiver inside of a hundred kilometers, but with enemy contact imminent anyway it seemed a moot point, and his unexpected arrival might even take some of the pressure off of the beleaguered command hub.

'NorthSEC Home, NorthSEC Home,' Rin transmitted, 'this is AC _Knell_ on approach from your southward. Hold fire on my vector. Repeat: hold fire on my vector.' A few seconds ticked by in silence, comm techs no doubt trying to figure out who or what he was. 'NorthSEC Home, NorthSEC Home,' he tried again, 'this is AC _Knell_ on approach from your southward - are you receiving?' Another handful of seconds passed filled only by the dull, mechanical rhythm of _Elysium's_ feet, before an upper corner of the comm screen began blinking in accompaniment with a soft tone in his helmet's headset, signalling an incoming transmission. Rin dialed the system to the frequency flashing on the readout, and tapped the indicator to put it through.

'Unknown Armored Core, this is NorthSEC Actual,' came the terse reply. 'You are in restricted territory under EarthGov Defense Force jurisdiction - identify yourself immediately.'

_They sure kicked that upstairs fast._ Rin figured the tech must have either had jittery nerves or been new to their post, to bother the lieutenant colonel with one erroneous sensor contact - that or EGDF comm protocols were absurdly top-heavy. 'This is "Iscariot",' he sent back. 'As per the terms of my contract I was assigned to Four-Thirteen Forward a few days ago - the transfer should have come through this morning.' He paused a moment, considering. 'I'm not up to speed on your codes...' he added, reaching up to punch a number into his friend-or-foe-identification system, 'but my FFI's squawking oh-seven-three-two - that's oh-seven-three-two. I'd be much obliged if you didn't slag my AC.'

'Copy that, "Iscariot", stand by,' Lieutenant Colonel Tiering told him non-committally. The sounds of a busy C&C filtered mutely through the comm - and evidently through someone's hand, on the other end - before the channel was closed and then transferred to another station with an audible click.

' "Iscariot",' came a new voice, this time a woman's, 'we've confirmed your transfer...you're early.'

'Just trying to make a good first impression,' Rin answered the implied question casually. Then he added, more seriously: 'I'll give you the full version later.'

'Unrated and uncut, copy that, Raven,' she acknowledged, evidently satisfied for the time being. 'I'll bring the popcorn.' Rin shot the comm pannel an odd look, and grinned despite himself; beneath her clipped and all-business manner there evidently lurked a sense of humor - and one wholly unfazed by the looming _Geist_ threat to boot. 'Keep your comm locked in,' she was instructing him - 'all updates will be relayed through this mission frequency. I've been designated as your Operator for the duration - the name's Emma. Welcome to Four-Thirteen, Raven.'

Realization took a spare instant to hit home. _Oh, no..._

'Glad to be here,' Rin said more soberly, doing his best to keep the sudden upwelling of sympathy from too heavily tincturing his voice. Her tone as she made the ostensibly innocuous statement had been steady as a rock, but if she was available for assignment to him, then that meant her previous charge had almost certainly died. Decades before, Raven's Ark had toyed with the idea of handing off multiple contracts to its Operators to manage in the hopes of expanding its client base - but the experiment had been abandoned almost before it was begun. A number of mercenary deaths in connection with the abortive initiative had left a scandalous pall hanging over the Nest, out from under which it had emerged only after several years. The simple reality was that looking after the myriad needs of even one Raven was a full-time job, and no Operator, however capable, could be in enough places at once to see to the needs of two.

And if it wasn't quite a rare occurence, then it was, at the least, uncommon for a Raven-Operator pair to split of its own accord. It did happen on occasion, but while the screening process varied with the Nest, in all cases was it thorough to a fault. The relationship between mercenary and liaison was necessarily a close one, and each Nest took great pains to effect the strongest matches that it could; despite the ambivalence of the official stance on romantic entanglements they periodically arose nevertheless, and if nothing else, fast friendship was essentially a given.

The trauma of losing a Raven, consequently, hit most Operators doubly hard, both wounding their professional pride and snatching a close friend from their life in the same fell blow, and Rin's every instinct screamed at him to go to Emma right then, relative stranger though she was - on the edge of a combat zone though _he_ was - and comfort her as best he could.

_That was how..._ His eyes unfocused as he stared through the viewscreen to another time and place, old memories swimming up unbidden from the mire of a past that still visited him in the small, sleepless hours of the night.

That was how he had met Laine, his first and only Operator, until today...and the one great love of his life. He had been all of twenty years old, not quite cocky but possessed of a brash confidence that nonetheless outstripped the reality of his piloting skill, if not his lofty estimation thereof. _A thousand years ago._ He was new to the Global Cortex rosters, the bitwork finalizing his contract scarcely run through the system, and was just settling into his apartment in one of the lower residential quarters of Layered when Laine appeared at his door. She had, he learned, been assigned as his GC liaison, and had stopped by to tell him in person.

Yet what began as a formal introduction rapidly warmed to a more intimate gathering, Raven and Operator talking for hours as each discovered in the other a startlingly, unexpectedly simpatico spirit. More than the handful of mutual interests in which they shared, it was the deeper syncretism of their respective personalities and general worldviews by which he was most struck, an uncanny commonality of outlook, belief, and even aspirations that hinted auspiciously at their future.

It was only as dusk gave way to evening, though, that the fuller circumstances which had brought them together became clear to Rin. Laine, he could tell from the first instant that she stepped through his door, was as strong as they came - but when she at last assayed an account of her previous Raven and how he had died Rin could see just how deeply she had been wounded, and the unshed tears that she had bravely held in check, glistening at the corners of her deep blue eyes, broke his heart. Almost before the thought had formed he was at her side, enfolding her in his arms, and it was there, in his embrace, that she spent the night. It wasn't until weeks later that he had professed his feelings for her, and she hers for him, but it was that day, as she sobbed softly into his neck, that somehow he just...knew: he loved her.

The _crump_ of a distant missile impact wrenched Rin back to the present, and his eyes flicked in momentary confusion about the cockpit that had suddenly materialized around his old couch; his arms twitched reflexively, the phantom sensation of Laine's body tearing away a piece of his soul as it faded. _Damned fool_, he berated himself angrily, shaking his head roughly to clear it, _you're better than that - act like a professional._ With a wordless growl he ruthlessly forced down all thoughts of the past, fixing his attention securely to the here and now. A last, obstinate echo whispered that he needed only _draw_ on his pain, _harness_ his anger for the contest ahead, but he silenced it firmly as he let out a resolute breath. No, he had spent that fury on more deserving foes than the faceless specters that haunted the 'Line, and laid it to rest before their headstones; he cared to exhume neither.

_Elysium's_ steady progress north took her down the shallow declivity of a dry riverbed, carrying 413 Forward temporarily out of sight; sun-baked mud crumbled beneath her feet as she picked her way across the course of the ancient waterway, a few pertinacious clumps clinging loosely to the cloven spurs of her heels. Throwing a glance over his shoulder, Rin studied the terrain through which he had passed, and wondered how long he had been lost in unintended reflection. Not very, he hoped, though the region boasted little by way of recognizable landmarks to distinguish one trackless kilometer from the next; looking down to his left, the nav-panel, at least, informed him that he was no more than a handful of minutes from his destination. He opened his mouth to request further instructions, but hesitated, jaw levering shut again as he considered what to say. The impulse to extend to Emma a few kind words, or at the very least his condolences, still tugged at him mightily, though he knew that this was neither the time nor the place; he settled regretfully for a more practical status update.

'I'm coming up on about six klicks from your position,' he told her, rather more gently than he might have otherwise - 'please advise.'

'Copy, "Iscariot", correct heading to...' There was a slight pause as Emma evaluated relative bearings and velocities. 'Correct to oh-three-seven,' she came back a couple of seconds later - 'you'll be rendezvousing with the screening force as it falls back, and supporting as necessary.'

'Oh-three-seven, roger,' Rin said, eyeing the comm panel curiously as he nudged _Elysium_ onto a northeasterly vector. The explosion that he had glimpsed earlier had been too far away for him to gauge its impact point with any accuracy, though he had guessed that it would most logically have been in the vicinity of 413 itself. _Guess not._ Another minute passed in increasingly tense silence, the dark gray of the northern sector command hub's ultra-hardened lanicrete walls sliding by in the distance to his left; the pitter-patter of synthetic leather on polymer filled the cockpit as Rin drummed his fingers impatiently on the throttle column, a nervous habit from his youth that he had never quite kicked.

The artificial tranquility evaporated as _Elysium_ crested a low rise, replaced by the riotous scenes of combat not two thousand meters ahead of her. The battle had been joined in earnest, though it was clear that Rin had misunderstood the transport pilot. From the man's grim pronouncement of an attack on 413 Forward, he had assumed that the _Geister_ had already reached the hub itself - but it seemed now that Lieutenant Colonel Tiering had favored a rather more proactive tack, dispatching his heavy armor to meet them afield and, if it proved unable to defeat them outright, harry them on the way in. Rin supposed that it amounted to something like an elastic defense in microcosm.

The precise make-up of the screening element was difficult to determine through the dust bank that it had kicked up, but from the vantage of _Elysium's_ magnification subroutines the sloping, sand-colored armor of _Sheridan_ turrets was periodically visible as they sped 'set-ward. They were falling back in good order, individual, four-tank platoons maneuvering almost as a single vehicle as they wove expertly among one another, confusing _Geist_ targeting solutions while leaving their own lines of fire open; Rin found himself intrigued by the ingenuity of their movements, which took deft care never to expose the same tank to enemy fire, instead shuffling each about the formation at semi-random intervals. _Clever._

But for all their evident skill, Gus was pressing the tankers hard at their rear. The MT's in pursuit struggled awkwardly to keep pace on their reverse-jointed legs, their shots frequently going wide as their targeting software tried valiantly to compensate for the exaggerated bobbing motion of its firing platform, their thin armor woefully inadequate before the _Sheridans'_ one hundred fifteen millimeter fusilades. But in their midst prowled the larger and far more dangerous _Bären_ which Rin knew only by reputation, for all appearances oversized Armored Cores with equally up-scaled weaponry in tow; he winced as angry red plasma splashed against one of the tanks from a near-miss, ERA blocks liquifying on the instant.

There was a certain probing aspect to the movements of the _Bären_ that raised warning flags at the back of Rin's mind, and as he took in the frenetic choreography on display before him, his more conscious thought processes finally hit upon what his intuition had already grasped: the _Geister_ were trying to turn their flank.

Like any competent Raven, his knowledge of basic battlefield tactics was, however informal, fundamentally sound. While movies tended to romanticize the mercenary lifestyle rather heavily, in reality it was flatly, brutally Darwinian, buffered by a vanishingly slim marin of error; the often staggering mortality rate among their ranks effectively redounded to its own obscurity, as it was only of those pilots who were skilled enough to beat the odds that any notice was taken. Their profession was the very quintessence of the high-risk, high pay-off business venture, and those who lacked the requisite ability to see it through were simply lost to the ignoble quern of anonymity. Such Ravens as survived any length of time did so because they had sharper reflexes, were better prepared - or, yes, even luckier - took greater care in the maintenance both of their Armored Cores and themselves, and understood warfare in broader scope.

Though he would never presume to liken his talents to the singular genius of Hannibal, Rin's own apprehension of the tactical commerce of the battlefield had still, like that of Carthage's greatest general, been forged in nothing less than the crucible of experience; obtained more dearly, his lessons were accordingly esteemed more highly, and recalled more vividly still. It was plain that, although outnumbered, the _Sheridans_ retained stubborn hold upon the balance of power, keeping it squarely level by dint of superior application of the principles of fire and maneuver. But while the main body of MT's harassed them from behind, four or five of their larger, more nimble brethren ranged farther out to the north or south, pulling the pursuing _Geister_ into an irregular crescent and trying to draw its edges forward to encircle the tankers. Thus far the armored column was staying ahead of their efforts, but by a scant step only, and Rin cast about the battlefield, searching for any sign of the supporting forces that he knew Tiering would surely have dispatched along with the _Sheridans_. He caught a hint of jade booster efflux amidst the swirling dust beyond the distal, northern flank, but none such was forthcoming to the south, where it was more sorely needed. But was that it? Just one Raven to safeguard an armored company or two? No, that couldn't be - unless 413's commander were a madman, it was far more likely that Rin was looking at the remnant of something larger. But the tankers' continued survival hinged on the ability to maintain concentration of fire along a single, withering vector, and if forced to divide it among three, or even two, sooner or later the _Bären_ would slip past their defenses and cut them to pieces.

Rin's eyes narrowed behind the visor of his stylized flight helmet. _We'll see about that._

_Elysium's_ thrusters awoke with a stellar roar, hurling her into a hard, determined skim across the open desert. Rin thumbed one of her vertical missile launchers to life, and counted down the seconds as his AC greedily devoured the distance between her and the nearest _Bär_; the HFD's diamond-shaped reticle jittered fitfully about the confines of the elaborate targeting brackets while _Elysium's_ fire control systems calculated a solution. Just inside eight hundred meters both went a violent red, and the count-down beep in Rin's headset passed into the solid tone of a positive lock; still he waited, letting a painful second pass until three tiny indicators were visible above the brackets. Then he fired.

With a muffled _whump_ three missiles arced away moving just at the edge of the eye's ability to track, describing a graceful, near-parabolic trajectory that would terminate at the hulking _Geist_ machine ahead. Rin had no idea what sort of ESM gear his adversary might have on call, though as close as he was, he imagined that the question was purely academic. His own early warning systems, he knew - the only loose analog that he had ready to hand - were rudimentary at best, coming down, in the end, to nothing more than a flashing indicator on the forward display to signal an impendent weapons lock. But the typical Armored Core engagement, both statistically and in his own experience, was fought at no more than a thousand meters anyway, at which range no human being alive, however gifted, could possibly hope to react to a projectile moving at several times the speed of sound. Many Ravens, particularly younger pilots, relied upon such suppression systems as might be organic to their 'Core itself, and often supplemented them with anti-missile extensions as well, but in both cases were their countermeasures reactive rather than preventative, and Rin had always regarded them as more crutch than shield. The only dependable defense, in his estimation, consisted in an amorphous latticework of evasive maneuvers, situational awareness, and target prioritization, true proficiency in which was difficult to attain, but an order of magnitude more effective. To judge by the _Bär's_ movements, it seemed to Rin that he had caught it entirely off guard as it tested the tank formation's southern flank, and he was already shifting course to intercept the next before his missiles had connected.

But his quarry must have noticed the lock after all - or had inhumanly fast reflexes - for at the last minute the machine made a savage juke to the right, bone-white armature awash in a blaze of orange and yellow as the three warheads detonated milliseconds apart behind it; the blast, part heat, part shockwave, part jagged metal fragments, immolated half the _Bär's_ armament, but it pressed on, undeterred. Even as Rin was heeling _Elysium_ about to finish the job, it whirled to face its new assailant without missing a beat, responding with a combination of almost mechanical implacability and raw speed that the Raven found frankly astonishing. _How in God's name does it move like that?_ He couldn't begin to guess where it found the power to lend its bulk such animation, but his opinion of ghost tech rose a few points, and he refiled as confirmed fact a number of rumors that he had heard several months before.

Far from dismayed, however, Rin slipped into the old, familiar rhythms of battle with an enthusiasm that he hadn't felt in more years than he cared to count; now he was truly in his element. He had never believed in fate, nor had he ever put much stock in the superstitious prattlings of either parareligious zealots or their pre-Destruction antecedents about preordination - so far as he had observed, their belief systems were a throwback to a less enlightened age, comprising nothing more or less than an ignominious institutionalization of the boundless human capacity for self-deception. But that certain individuals often manifested a marked aptitude for certain vocations was obvious enough, and in that sense, at least, Rin knew that he was born to be a Raven.

For him the battlefield had always assumed a razor clarity, cause and effect conspiring, in his keen perception, to presage the outcome of the next few seconds almost as plainly as if they were already unfolding. Like any natural pilot, he simply understood the interplay of hunter and hunted on an instinctive level, able to intuit action and consequence in combat as easily as one deduced the practical rules of gravitation on the playground. He had never cared for the term 'killer instinct', for the concept that it struggled feebly to capture entailed far more than the crude visitation of harm upon another - but in its fuller connotation of a comprehensive and incisive conversance with warfare on a tactical scale, it was wholly apt.

Main armament lost to Rin's near-miss, the _Bär_ brought up what appeared to be an outsized grenade rifle affixed to its left arm; the Raven jinked to _his_ left, forcing his opponent to track into the shadow that its own body cast across its weapon arc, and slowing its reaction time that much further. As it was it very nearly landed a hit on _Elysium's_ trailing arm, and Rin's tensed involuntarily at the fancied sensation of the explosive charge grazing past.

Verniers and thrusters pulsed steadily as _Elysium_ gracefully carried her booster-assisted sidestep into a tight, clockwise circle about the _Geist_ AC - whatever it might be, Rin had no other name for it - and with an aggressive _buzz-hum_ her energy blade sprang into existence. The _Bär_ backpedalled sharply, a flash of ice-white efflux propelling it beyond the path of it's diminutive pursuer's erstwhile orbit, and prompting a satisfied grin from _Elysium's_ pilot. _So, the Tin Man's smarter than he looks._ The most natural reaction to an antagonist's attempt to slip behind one's back was to turn about oneself, following the movement to keep them in sight and away from the 'Core's vulnerable rear; slightly more experienced Ravens would often mirror the lateral motion with one of their own, but that, too, came down to nothing more than an agility game that the defender, owing to the other's headstart, would almost certainly lose. To instead pull back from the circuit of the opposing pilot's maneuver entirely was a reply both simpler and more profitable, neatly removing one from their line of fire and placing them in one's own. The _Bär's_ actions bespoke passable skill, but Rin was already slackening his elliptical course into an expanding, outward spiral in anticipation; Gus was good, but he was better.

A low, vicious sweep of _Elysium's_ blade as the two machines met took the ghost AC's legs cleanly off at the knees, and its momentum, with the sudden loss of equilibrium, sent it tumbling backwards; one of its shoulders caught on rocky protrusion, flipping it up and over into a thunderous, face-down landing a few meters away. But before Rin could fully circle around to finish what he had started, the _Bär_ disappeared in a searing, white-hot fireball, blinding even through the viewscreen's hastily-applied emergency filters; the wall of compressed air thrown out by the explosion hit _Elysium_ like Atlas' fist, and verniers fired crazily as her AUBAL systems strove to keep her on her feet. Within, Rin blinked and gave his head a quick shake to clear the daze.

_Christ, note to self..._ The blow that he had dealt the _Bär_ was surely a crippling one, though by no means was it fatal, and he wondered what the _Geister_ were so anxious to hide that they had - apparently - rigged their 'Cores to self-destruct in the event that they were disabled. But the question would have to wait, and he filed it away for later contemplation, going hurriedly evasive as the other two _Bären_ on his side of the _Sheridans_ abruptly took notice of him; he winced as shrapnel sounded like hail across _Elysium's_ right side from a nearby grenade impact, two missile contrails streaking by hot on its tail. Her blade evanesced as she put her rifle into play, snapping off half a dozen shots in rapid succession at her closest source of grief; Rin's aim, as good as ever, landed as many solid hits, but his features gave way to a humorless frown as he watched the rounds spang harmlessly off the _Bär's_ armor.

_Grand._

But his sarcasm was largely reflexive: so long as they found him more diverting sport than the tankers, he was content enough to sow desolation among their ranks. For Rin, the engagement to that point had been an exploratory exercise, a probe to feel out the forces arrayed against him - but now he had the measure of his foe, and he found it wanting.

One could read a great deal from the manner in which a another pilot comported him- or herself in the cockpit - from their 'stick personality', as he'd heard military aviators call it on occasion - and as impressive as they undeniably were, it was just as apparent that whatever guiding intelligence lay behind the _Bären_ lacked either the expertise or the will to make use of their machines' latent potential. Everything about their behavior, from their slightly stilted maneuvers to their inexplicably piecemeal response to his arrival, had a strangely formulaic dimension to it that he couldn't entirely quantify, and Rin found it difficult to escape the impression of items being ticked off of a checklist before they acted. Wherever the _Geister_ had learned to fly, it seemed that their instructors had gone to considerable lengths to denude their technique of any discernible passion or individuality, and to expunge any trace of the erratic - either that, or Gus simply had no soul to speak of.

But why they might have done so, Rin could scarcely fathom, as it was precisely their natural unpredictability, in concert with their training, that gave a good pilot their personal edge. In all reality, for both the Raven and their more conventional military counterpart did the fundamental tactics and maneuvers at their disposal form an eminently limited repertoire, a small pool that human ingenuity alone imbued with a useful depth. It would be a simple matter for a computer or even a child, with adequate guidance, to browse the catalogue of available options and make a logical selection according to the dictates of a given scenario - it was, rather, in its inventive employment that the baseline toolset attained to its greatest efficacity. On the succumbent circumstances Rin could only speculate, but so long as the _Geister_ remained unacquainted or otherwise out of touch with that most critical of faculties, their abilities would languish in the obscure theatre of the second-rate; they held no terror, for him.

Nor, by extension, for his dauntless companion. As quickly as she had retreated _Elysium_ was advancing again, ducking in and out of their kill zone as she drove relentlessly for the two _Bären_. Despite the awe with which people tended to look upon the ability to successfully engage multiple targets simultaneously, it was less the superhuman feat that they imagined than a practical exercise in problem solving, in methodically staggering threats to ameliorate one's numerical disadvantage. There existed a multitude of potential solutions to that end, but the most basic was nothing more elaborate or mystifying than keeping an opponent between oneself and another, more distant aggressor, cluttering their field of fire and halving the number of weapons that the other, hopefully fratricide-conscious side could bring to bear. There were obvious limits to the stochastic hurdles that a single pilot could clear, and they multiplied exponentially with each additional adversary - but skill, talent, and a cool head, leavened with a bit of creativity, would go far to hold the playing field level, and Rin had each in abundance.

To their credit, the _Bären_ were somewhat less coöperative than he would have liked, fast enough, despite their mass, to just about keep pace with his efforts to entangle their firing lanes - he had succeeded in closing to the rearmost _Bär_ almost all windows of opportunity, but from time to time it still managed to scoot out from behind its partner for a clear shot. Smoothly switching tactics, Rin cycled through again to _Elysium's_ more utible vertical missiles, letting the useless rifle drop back to her side; he let fly with another pair of warheads, this time setting his sights on the farther of the two _Bären_. Absent the means of ensuring that one foe remained interposed between oneself and another, then presenting one of them with a threat more dire than oneself would also serve as a helpful distraction, every bit as effective in reducing incoming fire, and leaving them little choice but to turn their attention to the greater danger from a new quarter.

Initiative firmly in her grasp, _Elysium_ obstinately refused to cede it again. Freed, for now, of the necessity of managing both _Bären_ at once, she surged forward, bearing down upon the nearest with redoubled ferocity. She lithely slipped its attempt at repulsive fire as her blade snapped back to life, her rifle, ostensibly her primary armament, pointedly ignored. Long-established Raven doctrine prescribed a well-balanced weapons compliment, one theoretically suited to any task that might be asked of it - and, indeed, a rifle and energy blade for their general utility, augmented by missiles and a heavy cannon for long-range, single-point firepower, had still been common AC kit when Rin was younger, though few anymore went to the bother of upholding the tradition. He himself accounted the basic principle sound enough in the abstract, but in practice disliked the lopsided trim characteristics to which the larger-caliber weaponry gave rise, preferring instead _Elysium's_ more stable configuration. Above all else he had need of an agile and responsive mount, for, while a competent marksman, it was swordsmanship that was his true stock-in-trade.

Even had the longarm that she carried found the _Bär's_ armature a more pregnable target, both it and the missiles on her back were of almost secondary importance, _Elysium's_ mid-sized energy blade, in Rin's capable hands, comprising the real centerpiece of her offensive inventory. Genuine mastery of the weapon was bought but dearly, hard-won through nothing less than grueling, ceaseless drill, and if such had been uncommon in the past, then the Ravens of the post-Emergence era were, if anything, even less inclined to invest in the endeavor the time and energy that it demanded. Yet to its rare students the discipline imparted a tool of matchless lethality, for, where a missile could be fooled or a rifle shot thrown wide, an expertly-placed bladestroke was warded by little save another so informed. A lifetime devoted to the endless cycle of practice and application had born Rin further into the statistical margin than most, and if there were a comparative few who wielded one such with dexterity, then he could make his blade _sing_.

A jabbing feint to the right goaded _Elysium's_ prey neatly into the heart of her personal envelope, and as it jinked away her thrust flowed seamlessly outward into a lightning horizontal slash that even the _Bär_, with all its incongruous celerity, had no hope of outrunning. The six-meter bar of coruscating blue knifed through its torso before it had taken two steps, relieving it of the burden imposed by the top third of its body, and even as the _Bär_ crumpled _Elysium_ shot after its cohort, leaving her victim to its makeshift, self-initiated funeral pyre.

The last had eluded his missile salvo, as he knew it would, but his only interest was in the seconds that his diversion had cost it. The _Bären_, frankly, impressed him no more than the jumped-up 'tracer jocks who, generally possessed of money in greater abundance than sense, all too often populated the arena rosters, and by whose backwards reckoning top-flight parts were somehow tantamount to a commensurate level of skill. Both were predictable to the point of gullibility, easily diverted, distracted, or otherwise directed, with the proper nudge, wherever a superior pilot might wish - preoccupied by careless missilefire never intended to inflict any meaningful damage, or even connect at all, the remaining _B__är_ had squandered what little chance it had to press home the fleeting advantage of numerical superiority, which in more talented hands might well have carried the day.

But as the last few tens of meters between them elided, _Elysium_ spun away from a flurry of electric-white energy bolts the size of her arm and sliced through the barrel of the offending weapon as she went, whirling out, around, and behind the _Bär_ to ram her blade viciously through its back. A sharp, upward stroke ripped it free, and she shoved the ghost 'Core's twitching ruins contemptuously aside as she left to seek richer hunting grounds.

Their southern flank suddenly relieved of all encumbrance, the _Sheridans_ massed their fire once more along a 'rise-ward vector, punching fresh holes through the ragged body of MT's still doggedly clinging to their line of retreat. By any conceivable rubric the main battle tank's categorical inferior, the diminutive species of Muscle Tracer was clearly lost without the support of its elder brother - however unwilling Gus was to concede defeat, the scales had not so much tipped as toppled in favor of 413's heavy armor.

'Incoming transmission from Kilo Company's commander,' Emma announced crisply, supplying, to the satisfaction of Rin's unvoiced curiosity, the identity of his beneficiaries - 'patching tac frequency through now.' On the comm panel a second set of numbers blinked into existence beneath the first, _Elysium's_ tranceiver synching up a new subchannel with the open line back to the command hub.

'I don't know where the _hell_ you came from, Raven,' the unnamed captain came on, 'but you make damn sure you look me up when we get back - I o-' His next few words were lost to a deafening fulmination, corresponding, no doubt, to one of the seven or eight MT's that just then came apart behind the _Sheridans_; Rin fell back at an oblique angle toward the southern fringe of what little remained of the enemy formation, _Elysium's_ rifle barking out her own contribution to the mop-up effort. '-nk,' the tanker finished, just before his sentiment was punctuated by another manmade thunderclap; from the north, the higher-pitched chattering of a heavy machine gun filtered across the kill zone, the occasional tracer and snatch of viridian fire throwing splashes of color across the billowing dust.

'Roger that,' Rin returned, allowing the wisp of a thin, satisfied smile to light beneath his visor; then, more seriously: 'how's your northward looking?'

'_Pretty_ well sanitized,' the company commander replied, the undercurrent of amusement that had crept into his tone suggesting the query was somehow superfluous. ' "Aurora"...' He trailed off, and Rin could almost hear him shaking his head, non-plussed. 'Well, you'll see for yourself, soon enough.'

As the last red contact winked out on his HFD's sensor readout, the Raven's eyes cut to the steadily withdrawing tanks, then slid warily to the 'rise-ward horizon whence the _Sheridans_ had come, implications churning behind stonily contemplative features. _Elysium_ loped easily alongside the armored column , its maximum cross-country speed demanding less than half of what her long legs and more sophisticated powerplant could sustain...but even free of pursuit, they hadn't slowed by a single klick per hour.

'Kilo-Actual,' he began carefully, 'that force just now...'

'Yeah,' the captain confirmed his suspicions quietly, levity gone - 'just the advance element'.

'Ah.' Rin's gaze drifted back over his shoulder. 'Roger that.'

_Viene la tormenta..._

**B****RYAS ****T****OANE**

Gus was obviously insane.

Although his duty shift had technically ended over three hours ago, Toane still lingered in the 'Enclave', unable - or at least unwilling - to concede defeat. The comprehensive analysis, collation, and organization of the welter of new data from the 'Line-wide _Geist_ offensive two weeks gone remained his primary task and, if anything, constituted something on the order of two full-time jobs - while some of the more significant lacunae in their knowledge-base persisted, for the first time in two years they had the beginnings of a genuinely cohesive picture of ghost technical capabilities, their progress hampered by nothing so much as the flat paucity of manpower available to cope with the unprecedented embarrassment of informational riches. In consequence of the sheer number of engagements that had comprised the general assault, and the raw tonnage of CARTA equipment on hand to record them, every single and last datum point had been collected in triplicate and quadruplicate at least, and once checked against one another would prove productive of _Geist_ performance profiles as accurate as it was statistically possible to make them - provided, of course, a team of sufficient size to actually finish the analytical work-ups before year's end. Stretched as perilously thin as the frontier forces were, any surplus of men and materiel was necessarily restricted to the wistful daydreams of overworked logisticians, and in the whole of the Central Sector just three analysts had been available for temporary reassignment to EastCOM Home's S-2 shop.

But heading up the codification, in effect from scratch, of a true ghost database Toane relished as an opportunity to spread his wings, after a fashion, and experiment with a miniature command of his own; the personnel headaches by which it was plagued troubled him comparatively little, as they, at least, were born of comprehensible factors that he could rationally deduce, the consequence of circumstances that he could identify and, if not put to rights, then at least work around.

Gus, though...

As a matter of course Toane stayed abreast of reports coming in from the front, and more of his off hours than not were spent in the hitherto fruitless attempt to extract some modicum of sense from _Geist_ movements; free time and sleep were luxuries of which he could husband only the fond memory.

Because, as he pored over the history to date of the _Geisteskrieg_, there emerged, irrespective of the countless angles from which he approached the data, nothing more than the fractured and wildly disparate shards of anything that might be said to resemble a strategy. Even the most fundamental points of military doctrine, the core, universal tenets of human warfare that necessarily underlay _any_ application of organized force as a furtherance of politics, Toane simply could not discover in Gus' prosecution of the war, no matter the number or the severity of the logical contortions to which he subjected them.

_There's got to be something I'm not seeing..._

The omnipresent, sub-bass rumble of industrial-strength air conditioning units, indispensible in a Command and Control facility packed to the figurative gills with military-grade computer hardware, was momentarily accompanied by the dry shuffle of several dozen sheafs of paper as he flipped back to a series of folders detailing the first phase of the conflict. Again.

From the beginning - literally the opening _seconds_ - the _Geister_ had adopted a policy that ran counter to every martial prescript that Toane knew, frittering away an element of surprise that could never be regained on a meaningless first strike, to no evident advantage, on an equally meaningless civilian target. Characterized by a middling population, marginal manufacturing infrastructure, and generally no military-industrial value to speak of, Isuka was arguably the very last place that any sensible strategist would have chosen to initiate hostilities; even as a cultural center it ranked somewhere in the bottom second or third percentile, important to no one except - apparently - Gus.

The low tones of a conversation somewhere behind him floated over Toane as he turned a few pages forward. A week after Isuka's summary destruction a second city was blotted from the map, this one both smaller and situate very nearly at the opposite end of the Silent Line, within a stone's throw of the _Neue_ continent's southern coast; as with the first, the Defense Force had never been able to ascribe anything like a plausible objective to its annihilation.

Toane thumbed absently and sightlessly through the rest of the report in his hand, staring past words that he'd long since memorized. The 'battles', if one cared to so generously term them, of the war's opening weeks blurred into one another almost indistinguishably, the one unifying thread that ran throughout nothing more than the ubiquitous lack of any recognizable purpose informing the deployment of _Geist_ forces - yet no matter how hard he tugged, it refused point-blank give so much as a millimeter, much less unravel into anything that he could use.

He tossed the packet aside with a careless flick of his wrist and took up another, then discarded it too after a few seconds' consideration. The second phase - or whatever future historians might ultimately choose to call it - of the conflict was simultaneously one of the bleakest and proudest chapters in the short history of the Earth Government and its then-Lilliputian Defense Force, an exercise in geographical triage less desperate only than it was heroic. Colonel Opnoff's almost Caesarian ability to both inspire and seemingly be everywhere at once had - just - arrested the fatal contraction of the frontier, and had not only anchored the 'Line where it stood, but, if not pushed it back, then somehow held it firm long enough to marshal his forces, bring the corporations into line, and mold them all into a bulwark strong enough to shield the fragile reflorescence of human civilization that lay behind. The Colonel - _The_ Colonel - had shown himself nothing less than the most consummate student of war in centuries, his career catapulted, within his lifetime, into the hallowed annals of history's greatest generals not because of conquests won far afield, but for an impossible defense of the baldly indefensible, erected with the strategic equivalent of nothing.

But however incomparable the valor of the Defense Forces - and, yes, Toane readily acknowledged, of the corporate forces as well - during the blackest months of the _Geisteskrieg_, however savage the actions that had miraculously consolidated the 'Line, they had no unique bearing that he could make out on the war writ large - or at least, there was nothing to differentiate the 'pattern', such as it was, of ghost attacks in the second phase from those of the first; the only tenuous line of demarcation between the two was the hard-won stabilization of EarthGov lines, which told him less than nothing about _Geist_ intentions.

Toane rooted around in the files spread before him, alternately examining and replacing them as he passed through the remainder of the first year and into the second a week or a month at a time. There was so little to mark out any single battle or campaign from any other... By fall the war had settled down into, essentially, a convincing modern impression of scaled-up trench warfare, the variegated force assembled beneath the EGDF aegis hunkered down behind its lanicrete walls to hang on to what it still had, and repulse any attempt at incursion. Some of the more salient points from essays and treatises that Toane had read on initiative in warfare swam up out of the murk of his long-term memory, but he let them pass unremarked, unwilling to hazard the distraction; a small knot of increased activity, visible through the ballistic glass that cordoned off the elevated S-2 corral from the cavernous C&C beyond, momentarily pulled his attention to the operations floor below, but he set it sternly back on task.

Somewhere in the vicinity of the next...the next _spring_ - even after fourteen years, he still had trouble acclimating to the altogether bizarre idea of seasons - the first, tentative hints of variation in _Geist_ attacks appeared to slip into the numbers, but so faintly that it was impossible to be certain. There might have been a subtle shift, a growing tendency for attacks to cluster in one area or another, but never for a long enough span or in great enough quantity to stand out as statistically significant - almost as soon as his interests showed the slightest sign of settling at one end of a sector they would move on to another, Gus still, as ever, lurching like a drunken barfly from one brawl to the next.

It really hadn't been until- Toane laid out a pair of older analytics atop the pile that dominated his corner of the situation table, placing two more recent reports alongside; he tapped each one absently with his pen as he scanned their contents, reconfirming facts that he'd already quintuple-checked. But, yes - it hadn't been until two weeks ago that _Geist_ behavior had incontrovertibly demonstrated any appreciable change, by all appearances in response to the new policy put in place on the strength of Toane's own recommendation. He felt a small thrill of pride ripple through him - afterall, he, just one more anonymous analyst, had made a measurable difference - but close on its heels a vague misgiving that he'd been unable to pin down for the past several days suddenly snapped into focus like a kick behind the eyes.

_Wait a second, why two weeks ago - why'd Gus respond then, but not before?_ He shoved one of the printouts aside to get at the folder beneath, skimming through to the early reconnaissance sorties into ghost country; he nodded almost imperceptibly to himself. Yes...yes - the underlying objective had been different, naturally enough, but now that he read over the operational details again, they hadn't been all _that_ far removed from his own proposal. He'd called for more conspicuous forays 'rise-ward, he granted, their express aim to provoke a response rather than evade detection, but still... _How would they look to _Gus _though_, _after all was said and done? How dissimilar would they seem, really, an ass-ton of Defense Force billets streaming over the 'Line either way..?_ He'd been positive, a few days ago, so sure of the success of his intelligence-gathering directive, but now the confidence that he'd mustered for his debut briefing had begun to slip; the more he looked at the facts, the more importunate grew the voice of doubt.

Toane threw an arm out to either side, grabbing a handful of plotting table and leaning heavily as he mulled over possibilities. _But if it wasn't our probes that got his attention, then what_ _else_ could _have?_ He was as well acquainted as were his colleagues with the old statistician's maxim that correlation was never tantamount to causality, but the synchronism was too suspicious to ignore, and far too precise - was it _really_ a reasonable or tenable assumption that the largest-scale enemy offensive of the war just _happened_ to coïncide, almost down to the week, with the EGDF's shift to an increasingly agressive stance? _Okay,_ _but how _could_ it have been that - why would the _Geister_ react now but not to the early recce patrols? That didn't make any sense either._

And now he was going in circles. Again.

Toane fixed the irregular hillock of cream, off-white, and manila in front of him with a baleful glare. He knew the answer that he sought - that the Defense Force _needed_ - was in there, buried somewhere in two years' worth of annotated field reports, AAR's, and strategic and tactical analyses, but try as he might he simply hadn't been able to uncover, figure out, or otherwise divine it. It _had_ to be there, there was just something that he was missing... Again.

He let out a careworn sigh as he rearranged the clutter of files, entertaining on some transconscious level the oblique, fatuous hope that so superficial an imposition of order he might somehow extrapolate to the events of the war itself; not for the first time, he couldn't quite suppress the wish that the backwards notion of homeopathy were actually anchored to some facet of the physical universe, rather than to the fantasy realm to which its parareligious exponents evidently subscribed.

But the more deficient segments of contemporary society were neither here nor there. Absently reaching off to his left for the slim black notebook in which he'd been jotting down observations and stray hypotheses, he recoiled in surprise as his hand brushed the coffee mug that had vanished hours ago behind one of the taller stacks which he'd desultorily consulted throughout. The burnished aluminum was cool to the touch as he picked up the vessel, but a quick succussion confirmed that it was still just over half full; it wavered before his lips as he debated the wisdom of finishing off its contents, weighing the good of his palate against the stern injunction, inculcated from the cradle in the hermetic and precariously balanced ecosystem of Layered, against wasting food or drink still edible or potable.

_Ah, fuck it._ He could use the caffeine anyway.

Toane nearly gagged the instant his tongue had processed the shock of the sensations to which it had been so rudely exposed, though he forced himself to choke it down regardless. _Surface _Above_, that's vile..._ EGDF coffee was a foul enough concoction when _hot_, in his opinion, the dissipation of heat energy serving only to deplete further its already scanty store of anything that might be called flavor - but the wretched taste would keep him alert as effectively as the mild stimulant, if not more so, which suited his purposes well enough.

Delicately disinterring his notebook from the quarter-meter or so of paper pressing down upon it, he opened it to a fresh page and propped it at a convenient angle on a low, relatively stable column of BDA's; he massaged his right temple and rolled his shoulders through a few tension-relieving motions, preparing tired muscles as best he could for attempt number he'd-lost-count-two-hours-ago. _Okay, from the top._

Tapping his pen distractedly between the narrow-ruled lines of the notebook, he studied the cluster of materials that he'd selected for their overview of the initial weeks of the _Geisteskrieg_, and let himself drift away, drift back, trying to distance himself sufficiently from the details of the conflict to paint it in broad strokes. His MOS, contrary to the beliefs of the occasional layman in conversation with whom he'd had cause to touch on the subject, was as much art as it was science, and if he would never be able to discuss the specifics of his work outside the select inner circle of his own intel section - the records of everything they did and produced, down to the last one, zero, and period, were sealed for the next one hundred forty years - then if somehow he could he imagined they would be surprised to learn just how nebulous was the methodology that they followed. Every analyst drew perforce from a different set of vocational tools, each precision-machined to the specifications of their individual areas of expertise, but to a man (or woman) they relied on instinct as much as logic - their job was to intuit, every bit as much as it was to calculate.

For, while the rote tabulation and enumeration of raw, accumulated facts was no great task, by itself a trivial duty that the average adult could likely discharge with no more than an hour of instruction, the ability to look beyond the ostensible disconnection of the surface data to the coherency lurking beneath was predicated upon a far rarer breed of talent. There existed no volitional calculus according to which a given body of variables were absolutely - or even reliably - indicative of enemy intent, the reconstruction of which the analyst could only effect by _feel_, more often than not, relying on their innate capacity to descry the deeper structure within seeming chaos to guide them.

In theory, at any rate. Frowning down at the morass of disjointed figures that in practice had defied every attempt at synthesis, Toane asked himself for the thousandth time what he was overlooking. That there was in fact a method to Gus' madness he had never doubted - no war, with all the risks attendant thereto; with the all-too-often horrific costs thereof; with all the staggering expense incurred by even the smallest-scale conflict, was ever waged for no reason, however opaque it might appear. It was merely a question of what, exactly, the _Geister_ hoped to accomplish, or how - the answer to either, Toane was certain, was the key on which would turn the decipherment of their thus-far incomprehensible conduct, and very likely the future of the war itself. He just had to ferret it out.

On a whim he rotated his notebook ninety degrees, and threw a horizontal line lengthwise across the page. Marking short, perpendicular dashes at the extreme left and right edges '27 Dec.' and '31 Aug.' respectively, he ticked off at regular intervals the intervening nineteen months, filling in the major landmarks of the _Geisteskrieg_ as he went: the initial shots heard at Isuka, on the first day of man's thirteenth year on the Surface; the dismal first weeks, in which the frontier came within a hair's beadth or less of total, irrevocable collapse; the Colonel's painstaking, millimetric Consolidation of the 'Line over the course of the following half year, every kilometer paid for in blood and lives; the stalemate that had set in by the end of the first fall; the joyless fourteenth anniversary of E-Day, and the first of the war's outbreak; the elusive, potential shift in Gus' operational tenor around the onset of spring; and the massive, coördinated assault hurled at the 'Line on the seventeenth of August, perhaps - or perhaps not - in response to the EGDF's more proactive reconnaissance efforts.

Toane idly rolled his pen across his fingers as he contemplated his sketch of the war from beginning to present, and screwed up the courage for another sip of the tepid dregs of his coffee; from the corner of his eye he noted that the C&C seemed inordinately busy for the evening watch, more uniforms than usual gathered around a number of the consoles and displays. But there was something in his timeline that had caught on the back of his mind, an echo, in its progression, of something that felt vaguely familiar; he hunched over the page, eyes roving back and forth across its contents. For the first fifteen months there was no change that he could discern, the random distribution of ghost attacks little more than white noise; around the beginning of the second March or so, the concentration of combat actions in certain areas seemed to increase, though not conclusively; and then, two weeks ago, the _Geister_ had attacked in force, hitting three-fourths of Defense Force assets on the 'Line. _Random, clustered, all-out..._ Toane repeated the words like a mantra, turning them over as he groped for whatever connection his subconscious was trying to make. He'd seen that pattern before somewhere, he was almost certain now, and he tried mightily to ignore the growing flutter in his heart rate. _Random, clustered, all-out..._ He returned his attention to the first...'meta-phase', for want of a better term, of the conflict - the 'random' period in which neither rhyme nor reason seemed to direct _Geist_ forces, for all appearances turned loose heedless of EGDF movements. They-

_Wait, hold on a minute._ He reared back a few centimeters blinking rapidly in surprise and disbelief, neural pathways ablaze as he flew through the ramifications of his innocuous observation. _Heedless of our movements..._ Built into his every examination of the data had been the implicit assumption, so natural that it bordered on the obligatory, that Defense Force and _Geisteswehr_ had been party to the same conflict, each applying measure and countermeasure in their turn as tactics evolved - wars were simply fought no other way. But the more he looked at the hard numbers, the more glaring the disassociation between the actions of each belligerent became, until Toane could no longer avoid the conclusion that had been staring him dead in the face for months: the _Geister_ weren't reacting to EarthGov forces at all.

Any and all awareness of the world around him fell away, his heart now hammering madly against the interior of his ribcage; he was almost reluctant to follow his line of thought any further, half paralyzed by the fear that any solution to which it led would prove as illusory as every other to come before. But now that he saw it, he could see nothing else. The establishment of the Silent Line as a viable defensive frontier, as well as the concatenate change in EGDF temperament, should have forced the _Geister_ to alter their strategy, to adapt on some quantifiable level to the shifting martial landscape - but they hadn't. _Demonstrably_ hadn't, in point of fact - for a year and a quarter the opposition had kept to the same quixotic tempo, striking like a bolt of lightning out of the blue then vanishing just as quickly into the unfathomed desolation whence they had come, frequently bypassing targets of greater value for those of lesser, and never once giving any sign of the slightest concern for the activities of the Defense Force.

And when Gus _had_ at last seen fit to break the monotony of his routine, it had been in response to no tangible alteration of EarthGov military policy. Provided that the phantom trend toward a higher density of _Geist_ attacks in certain areas were genuine - and it was Toane's fast-growing conviction that it was - then it fell months short of the decision to put his new protocols into play, which themselves he could no longer trust had been as provocative of the heavy assault two weeks ago as he might once have thought.

_No,_ he amended with immediate, unflinching honesty, _I was flat-out wrong; my proposal didn't make any difference whatsoever._ But far from upset that he had so egregiously misread recent events, he could scarcely contain his elation; his gaze slid off the page, falling to a point somewhere between the situation tabletop and eternity. It all fit, every contradictory piece of the heretofore insoluble puzzle suddenly raining into place: every attempt to anticipate ghost movements had failed because they'd reasonably, naturally, and just as fallaciously presumed that their mysterious adversary's actions were made in reply to their own. But they weren't, and they never had been - it made not the slightest bit of sense, by any conventional definition thereof, but in the context of a war so absurdly conducted perhaps a theory of commensurate absurdity was the only truly rational answer.

Toane's pen was an agitated blur about his fingertips, his thoughts coursing along causal paths faster still. For all the inestimable import of the insights to which he'd stumbled, as indissolubly as the data might at long last be made to cohere as a result thereof, they were nonetheless more stepping stone than destination, a gateway to yet larger questions. _If the _Geister_ really aren't reacting to us at all...then what _are_ they doing? Why _don't_ they care what we do?_ They'd always responded to the EGDF on a _tactical_ level, of course, ghost closing with and engaging local frontier force when and were necessity might require - but strategically, it was obvious that the two had effectively been fighting _past_ one another, rather than against. _But _why_? It's like we barely figure into their planning, like we're an _inconvenience_ that some autom-_

Toane froze, an icy spike of adrenaline suffusing his body with a giddy chill; his pen tumbled unnoticed from his hand, pittering across his notebook and vanishing into the chasm between two mountains of paper. _No._ That couldn't be it - it couldn't possibly be that simple. _Could it?_ Disbelief contended momentarily with the inevitable - but suddenly the dim, half-remembrance that his investigation had dredged from the muddy floor of recollection broke the surface, a submarine-launched ballistic missile burning the final answer across the sky as it raced heavenward. _Holy shit._

For a bare instant he could only stare dumbly into space, his epiphany washing over him like a torrent of granite. The same blank, impervious wall, which for twenty long and bloody months had withstood, unmarred, the tireless onslaught of every conceptual siege engine that Defense Force Intelligence could rally, he had just seen crumble in the span of seconds - and that beneath little more than the rough, analytical equivalent of banging his forehead against its surface in the frustration found only at wit's end.

Then he whirled about in search of one of the other analysts on duty, the outside world crashing back into his awareness in a dissonant riot of color and sound. 'Hey, Fossman,' he called across the 'Enclave,' his voice sounding a touch unsteady to his ear, 'come here for a minute - I need you to take a look at something.' As absolutely, almost parareligiously certain as he was of his conclusion, he needed another set of eyes to provide more objective confirmation.

In a back corner their resident CS and programming expert, another butter bar one or two years his junior, looked up reluctantly from the workstation over which he and a female officer had been talking quietly. 'Can it wait a while?' He gestured vaguely in the direction of the screen throwing a faint white cast across his partner's features. 'The Major wants these finished by tomorrow morning.'

'Trust me,' Toane told his colleague, 'this...' He clamped his hands around table's edge to keep them from shaking. 'This'll be worth it.'

**R****IN**** U****NIN**

Rin glanced upward reflexively as a sheet of rocketfire arced high overhead with a sound like the sky tearing itself asunder. Several kilometers to 'set-ward of 413 Forward, well and safely behind any potential engagement zone, a full battery of six Poly-Launch Rocket System vehicles were firmly entrenched, each two-launcher section supplied with an ammunition dump large enough to sustain a day or more of continuous operation. In essence the modern, cutting-edge descendant of the rude cannons with which, in part, Giovanni Giustiniani and Constantine XI had raised their heartbreakingly gallant defense of Constantinople during the last and most memorable siege of the 'Queen of Cities', the PLRS - or 'Polaris', as it was more colloquially known - could provide devastating, long-range fire support out to forty-eight kilometers, every semi-guided rocket, under the watchful eye of an experienced fire control operator, capable of delivering one hundred seventeen kilograms of ordnance with an average radius of error of just five meters. Calling on a diverse and extended family of munitions, each basic eM.27 rocket casing could be fitted out with a payload tailored to almost any conceivable mission profile, whether a monolithic, unitary warhead for general purpose destruction, hundreds of grenade-sized submunitions with anti-personnel and limited anti-armor capabilities, or even a high-velocity charge specially designed to penetrate hardened targets. Despite a somewhat lesser autonomy than more conventional self-propelled artillery - dependent, as it was, on a dedicated reloading vehicle to replenish the pair of six-rocket modules that it carried - the Polaris nonetheless enjoyed a greater effective range and heavier loadout, and with a burst firing rate of one rocket every four seconds could, in less than the space of a minute, put just over twenty-five times the destructive force on target.

A second volley thundered across the heavens, and this time Rin took note of its conspicuously low transit altitude. _Getting closer..._ With a maximum range of eight times the ground-level distance to the horizon the Polaris most commonly utilized a much greater angle of fire, hurling its payload high into the troposphere - and out of sight - along a quasi-ballistic trajectory that would deposit it well below the visible edge of the world. Indeed, all throughout the _Sheridans'_ fighting retreat, Rin learned afterward, the battery commander had been methodically and mercilessly hammering the main _Geist_ force as it moved 'set-ward, torrents of lethal rocketry crossing unseen above the tankers and Ravens to blunt the leading edges of the ghost van; it was only as the post-engagement calm had fallen that he noticed their passing, the sound of powerful rocket motors reaching him first as a distant rumble, like a fleet of impossibly high-speed transports following a suicidal 'rise-ward course into _Geistland_ airspace, then with increasing clarity as the apex of their flight ratcheted incrementally lower. As the main battle tanks and their half-impromptu escort passed within the formidable direct-fire perimeter of 413 Forward Rin caught a glimpse of the projectiles themselves, and had since watched them inch ground-ward as Gus pushed ever deeper into the Polaris weapons envelope, each barrage ticking off the minutes as he awaited the enemy's imminent arrival.

The _long_ minutes; again the soft tap of synthetic leather against polymer sounded in the close confines of _Elysium's_ cockpit, Rin's gloved fingers drumming out the same patternless, agitated tattoo as his eyes roved endlessly across the 'rise-ward limits of his visibility in search of some hint of the _Geist_ advance. Though patience was conventionally extolled as a virtue it had never been one of his, and if he occasionally recognized its necessity, then he accepted it only as an inevitability and an imposition. He had been taught - almost _conditioned_ - to make decisions as sound as they were immediate, evaluating, analyzing, and responding to relevant circumstances at the speed of thought, and once settled on a course of action his most instinctive, natural impulse was to...well, _act_ on it; board set and pieces in place, Rin found the present, interminable wait for Gus' next move profoundly grating.

In marked contrast to her pilot, radiating impatient anticipation on a level fit to match the invisible fountain of neutrinos streaming from the man-made star at her heart, _Elysium_ knelt with imperturbable, philosophical calm beyond the command hub's southern-most limit, her impassive countenance gazing across the slowly cooling desert to the gathering 'rise-ward storm. Hers would be a role of considerable fluidity in the impendent contest, she and her Raven broadly tasked with the maintenance of 413's defensive integrity along its southern flank. The armored company for which 'Aurora' and 'Iscariot' had so dramatically secured safe passage, as befit the magnitude of the firepower ferried about on the _Sheridan's_ four sets of treads, were the chief pillar on which their efforts would rest, the metal-ceramic composite promontory upon which the rising ghost tide would theoretically - _hopefully_ - break. Its three platoons described, in their deployment, a blunted wedge encompassing the outer 'rise-ward walls, the first strung north-to-south squarely athwart the _Geist_ line of approach, and the second along a southeast-northwest azimuth that would allow it to fire in support of both its sister formation and the northern quarter; the fourth - though fundamentally organized around a principle of tripartite division, neither the Defense Force nor the corporations had ever quite numbered their units accordingly; a vague, half-superstition transcending individual institutions as a meta-tradition that reached back to man's infernal last years on the Surface, the number three had long been accounted not merely unlucky but an ill omen, and, as were thirteenth floors by many architects, was avoided by every post-Destruction military with almost parareligious rigor - the fourth stretched from northeast to southwest in a mirror image of the second, optimally situated to exploit both 'rise- and southward firing arcs. The wisdom of digging them in right from the outset Rin had initially questioned, which measure struck him at first blush as one calculated to do little more than rob the _Sheridans_ of the mobility that, when married to the mighty cannonades which they so handily dispensed, redounded to their nigh unmatched potency on the battlefield. But subsequent consideration, as he'd thoughtfully watched them slip one by one into their fighting holes, had laid bare a succumbent rationale which he'd been hard-pressed to dispute, for if additional _B__ä__ren_ were afield - as they most assuredly were - then the main battle tank's relative speed would count for just over nothing; NorthSEC Home's heavy armor would be far better served by what defensive advantages their artificial sand berms might afford them than by a futile attempt to outmaneuver the deceptively agile ghost AC's.

Under the ideal circumstances which, no matter the age or clime, soldiers so rarely encountered in the field, 413's defenders would be able to pin their foe at the center of the sprawling, 'rise-ward firing lane over which the tankers were poised to exercise their signature brand of fiery dominion, the _Geist_ spearpoint dulling or shattering outright against a supersonic wall of tungsten and depleted uranium. But a quiet, derisive snort was sufficient to summarize Rin's personal estimation of that particular likelihood: it was a centuries- or even millennia-old rule of military thumb that the successful investment and reduction of a fortified position depended upon a three-to-one numerical advantage in favor of the besieging force, and if Gus seemed, in his opinion, to have pulled his piloting ability from the second-hand bin of an open-air bazaar, then his deficiency he was evidently disposed to supply as best he could with raw numbers. While Rin's own encounter had been too short and far too localized to accurately inform any utile assessment of ghost policy at large, what news reports from the front had percolated through the Interior over the years, necessarily generic though they were lest an entrenched reporter inadvertently divulge sensitive or mission-critical information, were unanimous in their depiction of a relentless adversary that absorbed casualty rates in excess of sixty or seventy percent with neither blink nor blanch. The _Geisteswehr's_ eerie disregard for its own well-being he took as implicative either of indoctrination almost without parallel in human history, or of assets to dwarf even the Persian war machine that a young Hellas had so brazenly defied - or more probably, if one cared to invoke Murphy's gloomy maxim, of both.

But then, he mused, when had it ever been otherwise? From Sumer to Rome to Byzantium, the barbarians massed at the gates had always outnumbered the few within - truly, one of the single most distinguishing characteristics of civilization was _minority_.

And the Earth Government, he would grudgingly allow, wore the mantle well, or at least reasonably so. Pallid shadow of its forebears though it was, it had also risen from perhaps the lowest nadir in human history - in some respects the lowest imaginable - to not only champion but also lead the charge into the first pivotal trial of man's rediscovered mettle. He never for a moment forgot that nine out of every ten EarthGov citizens - or nine out of every ten human beings _alive_, for that matter - would neither hesitate nor scruple to murder him where he stood, yet he retained sufficient purchase upon the slippery slopes of objectivity to recognize the merits of their government, despite its failings.

_No_, he corrected, _not their government - their_ nation. Small and porous though its borders were, it was animated not by the blind, come-hell-or-highwater pursuit of economic gain as were its corporate counterparts, but by an ideology and sense of purpose that lent it a geopolitical vigor entirely unknown since the nuclear firestorms of the Great Destruction had left the Surface a searing, radioactive charnel house. It alone had answered the call to arms while the incorporated powers squabbled, acting boldy and decisively to check the ghost advance while it still could, and dragging its sister governments into the war kicking and screaming - all in their best interests as well as its own, even if they had refused to acknowledge as much.

The obvious parallels between himself and Colonel Opnoff were not lost on Rin, and he might have spared a bitter, humorless laugh for the malicious irony of it all if not for the bile threatening to rise in his throat. Both had taken the initiative that none else would, Stoically shouldering the crushing burden of nothing less than humanity's survival because, in spite of their beneficiaries' own short-sighted remonstrances, it was the right and necessary thing to do - yet, where the Defense Force officer was lauded as a hero from the Silent Line to the 'set-ward-most reaches of the Interior, the Raven had been castigated without remorse or second thought, an object of aspersion and malign whose name the next three generations would curse with their collective dying breath.

In the caustic throes of darker moods, Rin had courted without demur the temptation to reciprocate the blackest of their ill will, and simply abandon his detractors to the ignominious fate that they so richly deserved - if his reprobate species were so benighted and crippled by myopia that it couldn't learn from its own mistakes, or accept the helping hand that had sacrificed _everything_ to arrest its fall, then perhaps it was best consigned to the oblivion toward which it had so blithely careered.

_And yet..._

A prolonged, soul-weary sigh escaped his flight helmet.

And yet, he knew, he could never truly bring himself to forsake his fellow man, any more than he would condemn posterity for events in which it had neither part nor say. While any lingering faith in his contemporaries had died with Laine, he still believed in man_kind_, and in the potential buried deep - at times almost irretrievably - within. Though humanity had turned its back on him, he had not turned his on it.

Rin's attention swung to the left viewscreen, moving up and over the planes of _Elysium's_ left shoulder and auxiliary thruster to fix upon the lanicrete ramparts above; the taut, pre-battle silence was broken only by another rocket salvo blazing half a dozen new ammonium perchlorate trails across the sky, and as he contemplated the two heavy weapons companies crowning the walls he was struck by a sudden wash of surreality. A month ago, he couldn't have imagined that he would ever find himself fighting side-by-side with the Defense Force, whose parent government had placed - and still maintained - on his head the highest bounty known to pre- or post-Destruction history (a numbing - and perversely flattering - thirty-seven million credits, when last he'd checked; the reward promised by Crest for his apprehension - conscious, comatose, or otherwise - ran a moderately close second at thirty-three). Yet here he was, incredibly, prepared to risk life and limb for a society that still bayed thirstily for his blood, on the strength of convictions that it had long since lost the capacity to fathom; the Raven shook his head helplessly for the bald insanity of the path on which he'd set his life. _'Strange bedfellows' indeed..._

But if such were the price of man's future, then so be it. He'd argued the matter from a hundred different directions with his inner devil's advocate, moving ceaselessly from point to counterpoint to alter-point for much of the 'Line-ward flight out - and, quite frankly, it _still_ rankled to work under the ostensible auspices of the very organization that had spent the twelve years prior to the war hounding his every step, chasing him into and out of Layered three times (that they knew about) and from one end of the Interior to the other. But what he had long known in the dusky marches of his subconscious he had at last realized in its plenitude beneath (whether ironically or fittingly, he wasn't entirely sure) Isaac City: however humbling it might have been to acknowledge the depths of one's own insignificance, the flat, unblinking fact of the matter was that the war was larger than him. In the grander historical scheme his loss, his sorrow - even, though to admit it he felt like the traitor that he was so often made out to be, Laine - counted for nothing against the exigencies of civilization itself, to the preservation and innervation of which he too had, as had Jefferson and his contemporaries, willingly pledged 'his support, his life, and his sacred honor'. _No matter the cost._ The Earth Government wasn't the ideal choice of custodians, or even just the best available from a limited range of imperfect options - it was very simply the only future that man had. While between them the larger corporations accounted for approximately two-thirds of the total military and political influence 'set-ward of the Silent Line - although the balance was fast levelling in the direction of the EGDF - all too often they were, by Rin's lights, little more than overgrown children in the pursuit of their interests, given more to petty and juvenile bickering over concerns of momentary advantage than to the formulation of sustainable long-term policy. No more suited than inclined to a responsibility as grave as the stewardship of humanity, they were, in bluntest terms, the past - if even that much. For, in the larger context of mankind's existence they endured as an uncomfortable reminder of how far and how precipitately a species on the cusp of greatness could fall - twice civilization had crumbled to abject ruin, and there, only at the basal reaches of the most grievous straits to which it had yet been reduced, had humanity found-

Mirage.

Crest.

Institutionalized anarchy.

The Controller.

Decay...

And, in the timeless fashion of all such outmoded entities, they clung to existence all the more fiercely for their obsolescence. Uneasy allies of barely-recognized convenience, in their manic drive for supremacy they would unquestionably turn on one another the instant the _Geist_ threat were neutralized, incognizant or unconcerned by the havoc wreaked anew upon the society that they had delivered only at great pains from fatal dissolution.

_Unless..._

Unless the Earth Government could once and for all bring them to heel. Colonel Opnoff had already taken enormous strides, cementing its legal and moral authority with the decisive assumption, in the first crucial weeks of the war, of the leadership that the corporations had signally failed to demonstrate. Tugging a quarter or more of their respective military arms firmly into the EGDF orbit in the bargain had been a brilliantly executed - if ethically questionable - masterstroke, at once eroding, in the name of the greater good, the only true foundation of corporate influence, and improving considerably his own nation's surest means of survival if (more likely when) the two ever came to blows. No ties bound more effectively than peril shared, and if push came to shove Rin would bet half of the credits to his name that the battle-hardened company servicemen and -women on the frontier would come down on the side of the comrades with whom they'd fought and frozen and bled, rather than remote and otiose boards of directors whom they knew only as the abstracted names that surmounted their respective chains of command; whoever commanded their loyalty would command a big stick indeed.

Of course, he only gambled with his life, never his money - but the point stood. More than just a cohesive and professional fighting force, Colonel Opnoff was slowly but surely gathering the traditional prerogatives of state in the hands of the Earth Government, shepherding into place the building blocks of a legitimate and stable political edifice of which the world hadn't seen the like in hundreds of years. Never in ten millennia would Rin have expected to champion, of all things, the EarthGov cause, but as the Christians of centuries past had believed that their God was wont more to provide what they needed than what they wanted, so he had found in the meteoric rise of Isaac City's star not the answer that he wanted, but that man desperately needed.

Or so it seemed to him, as nearly as he could determine. Having never met the colonel himself - a rendezvous that, at any rate, he felt confident would end in tragedy for one or both of them - he could only speculate on the motivation behind the man, but the writing both on the proverbial wall and between the equally proverbial lines was spelled out plainly enough. For, behind the conspicuous devotion, unflagging and absolute, with which Opnoff had borne the EarthGov banner was veiled but thinly a singularly uncommon failing - Ser was a patriot.

Even to Rin, who had delved deeply in his exploration of times, places, and concepts long forgotten by the somnambulant masses, his assertion smacked of the ludicrous - such sentiments had lost, several dozen generations before his birth, any general currency they might once have had, heaped indiscriminately atop the corpses of the last nations in a global crematorium fueled by the Christian era's cataclysmic passing. But the officer's conduct spoke expansive volumes, in the pages of which his dedication to something greater than himself had been set down in a clear and unmistakable hand. As though sprung from the very annals of Procopius he had, against all reasonable expectation or calculable odds, risen above the torpid mediocrity of his impoverished age, a modern-day Belisarius who, impossibly, had held fast the thin red 'Line by little more than strength of will. Rin harbored no delusions of rapprochement with the man who had personally launched the most desperate manhunt in history, and cemented the fugitive Raven's capture as one of the cornerstones - subordinated only to the defense, 'against all enemies foreign and domestic', of the EarthGov Constitution itself - of the repurposed EGDF's mandate. Yet however irreconcilable their differences, however deadly any encounter would undoubtedly prove, the Colonel he could, if nothing else, respect as an honorable and worthy enemy, and an echo of a nobler past; in better times, they might even have been colleagues.

An ear-splitting, Jovian roar, at what sounded like centimeters over the Raven's head, pulled him away from the bemused contemplation of his life and its manifold, often serpentine involutions. A tardy glance skyward was too slow to catch up with the spread of rockets before it had moved over a thousand meters downrange, but the seldom-used tracking algorithms of Rin's more attentive Armored Core compensated readily enough for his distraction; with a few keystrokes six boxy targeting bezels snapped closed around the receding plumes on the heads-forward display, each trailing a wire-thin plotting vector backtracking its course. Three numbers stacked one above the other to the right of each indicator, the top-most cyclying rapidly as the distance between AC and warhead continued to lengthen faster than soundwaves could propogate; the middle figure, marking off altitude in terms of meters AGL, descended almost lazily through the lower quadruple digits, and the final held more or less steady at a reading of just under seventeen hundred kilometers per hour. Punching in another command Rin splashed a grid-like, altimetric overlay across the half-dozen course projections, his eyes sweeping over the numerical readouts at the apogees of each. _Won't be long now._ With a satisfied grunt he keyed the entire supplementary display to quiescence, returning the HFD to its more pristine state. Some - particularly younger pilots - preferred as information-rich a layout as possible, but even operating within their comparatively narrow limitations, CMT fire control and sensor suites were more than enough to swamp the viewscreen with far more data than anyone could realistically process; while individual tastes and preferences varied, most learned soon enough the wisdom of the old adage that less was more.

As if to confirm Rin's estimation of the _Geist_ vanguard's relative proximity, in the far distance the artillery rockets disappeared in faint puffs of smoke as low-grade dispersal charges detonated in sequence, ensuring an optimum spread for the hundreds of submunitions packaged within each housing. A kilometer-wide swath of the horizon darkened visibly, suddenly overcast by a hazy, steel-gray hail, then-

Primary explosions rippled across advancing ghost front, followed immediately by a string of secondaries as magazines and other volatiles cooked off. The low buzz of last-minute status updates moving back and forth across the command channel fell away, the attention of 413's defenders universally fixated on the 'rise-ward spectacle; artificial thunder rolled across the desert, lapping softly against eardrums and audio receptors. It would not, indeed, be long now at all.

'All elements, report,' Tiering ordered calmly into the silence, breaking the temporary spell that seemed to have settled over his command; the tanker and heavy weapons commanders began sounding off in their turn, signalling the readiness of their respective forces as Rin keyed his own comm over to a secondary tactical frequency. Though Ravens themselves were somewhat underrepresented at the command hub - Rin privately suspected that EastCOM Home was reluctant to entrust so vital a link in its defensive chain to any more mercenary contracts than strictly necessary, even if they'd never admit it publically - the non-EGDF ranks were shored up by a healthy corporate presence in both combat and support billets. The smallest of the major powers by a substantial margin, Kisaragi had more than made up for its diminutive financial and military stature in the spirit and professionalism with which it had thrown itself into the war effort, allocating small but enthusiastic detachments of its Security Forces to almost every hotspot on the 'Line. In a more jaded moment Rin might have suggested that the company was simply in the market for a heavy-hitting insurance policy, ingratiating itself with the top of the recently-inverted food chain with an eye toward fostering a potent reserve of good will on which it could draw in the future - but the selflessly disinterested deployment of KiSec assets, more often than not at considerable remove from the more vulnerable but less vital holdings of its parent corporation, had staid his knee-jerk cynicism.

To 413 Forward itself Kisaragi had committed a reduced company - or squadron; Rin had never quite decided which term was more appropriate - of the lightning-fast hover MT's for which its pilots were either famous or infamous, usually depending upon how fresh the memory of one's last encounter with them was. Little more than a pair of high-output plasma cannons married to uprated engines and a thick propulsion fantail that kept the entire assemblage aloft, the compact model's vaguely capitine cockpit was its only concession to the humanoid dimensions more common to the extended family of Muscle Tracers; a novel, ring-like control surface enwrapping its midsection endued KiSec's signature mount with maneuverability second to a very few, and served to counter somewhat the inescapably bizarre handling characteristics inherent to any vehicle so divorced from the usual effects of static and kinetic friction.

The eight remaining members of MT Team _Tela_, reassigned southward to 413 after the other third of their unit had been lost to the heavy fighting at Lawdas two weeks earlier, had been folded into a pair of full-strength 'platoons' or 'flight groups' - which, owing to a somewhat inconvenient terminological overlap, were _also_ known as 'MT Teams' - with one placed under the immediate command of each Raven for the duration of the looming battle. As the nimble MT's were the only component of the hub's eclectic TO&E that could hope to keep up with an Armored Core the logic of the pairing was, to Rin's mind, self-evident, and he would have suggested it himself had Lieutenant Colonel Tiering not already arrived at the same conclusion; the combination would make for a flexible and highly mobile element equally well-suited to the harassment of the ghost flank or quick response to the battlefield's dynamic interplay of exigency and opportunity.

'What's the good word, _Kusa_?' he sent over the line to his own team, distantly surprised by the ease with which he could still balance the tones of confidence and nonchalance requisite to a leadership role that he'd not filled in...well, more years than he cared to number.

'Standing by,' the platoon commander/flight leader returned evenly - 'all systems nominal.' If the recent loss of Lieutenant Travess' comrades still weighed on her mind - as Rin knew it surely must have, above and beyond the command responsibilities that had devolved upon her after Lawdas - the glacial inflection on the comm gave no sign of it, any lingering anguish or animosity under lock and key beneath an icy professionalism that few in even the Defense Force could have matched.

One of her other pilots was less reticent in the expression of his enthusiasm. 'Ready to mow the lawn, "Iscariot",' he joked, in oblique reference to the unabbreviated name 'Kusanagi' by which his detachment of MTT _Tela_ was officially known, and for which the more wieldy sobriquet '_Kusa_' was a convenient verbal shorthand. Uniquely among its peers, KiSec had always eschewed numerical unit designators altogether, preferring instead to differentiate its component forces - from the highest levels to the most basic - by more onomastic means pulled from literature, mythology, or even, on occasion, popular culture. Textbook definition of unconventional though it was - and likely impracticable for any but the smallest and closest-knit of paramilitary organizations - Rin had always found the practice an oddly personable one, and thought it one of Kisaragi's more endearing quirks.

'Lock that chatter up, "Harley",' Travess told him mildly, though the rebuke, to Rin's ear, was given without genuine reproof, intended more to remind her charges of the limits of martial propriety than to chastise; he could almost hear the tight smile lurking behind it.

'Copy, "K-T",' the other pilot acknowledged dutifully. Rin arched a curious eyebrow at the lieutenant's call-sign, wondering whether it was just an unimaginative rendition of 'Kari Travess' or - however improbably - significant of the famous dividing line between the Meso- and Cenozoic eras; maybe palaeontology was one of her more conspicuous passions, he decided.

But, regardless... 'Roger all of the above, _Kusa_,' Rin with a wistful grin of his own, thoughts straying furtively to happier, comparatively carefree days as he flicked the comm back over to the command channel. '...' He hesitated a half-second, dead air crackling softly to itself while he debated the best identifier for his ad-hoc team; his crash-briefing upon blowing into 413-proper, thrown together by a harried operations team on the fly, had made no mention of what any such collective designation might be.

'ADR says your ACT's all in the green, "Iscariot",' came Emma's timely observation over the mission frequency, casually supplying, as if on cue, precisely the moniker for which he'd been searching; for a spare handful of deciseconds Rin stared at the comm panel, wondering despite himself if his new Operator had somehow sensed his unspoken query.

'ACT "Iscariot" lean and hungry,' he relayed to the lieutenant colonel, receiving a curt confirmation before the last ready reports took up where he left off. _Technically_ speaking an Armored Core team usually had more than one AC filling out its ranks, but it was as good a term as any. With a key tap _Elysium's_ transmitter made the hop back to the dedicated Raven-Operator mission channel. 'Thanks, ah..."Echo",' he improvised, reluctant to risk her given name over the air any more than they already had. No one had any idea if Gus could or would listen in on EGDF transmissions at the front, but he saw no reason to hand him anyone's identity on a silver platter - the military acrophonic for 'E' was decidedly uninspired, but it was the best that he'd been able to come up with on the spot, and it would suffice for the next few hours, anyway.

'Don't know what you mean, Raven,' Emma replied, accepting her hastily-assigned wireless handle without missing a beat - 'but you're welcome'. If a voice could be said to wink, then hers had surely done so.

Tiering's, however, was all business. '_Geist_ contact imminent,' he announced without preamble once the final element commanders had signaled all-ready - 'best estimates put Gus in our front yard in fifteen at the outside.' His words were punctuated by another round of rocketfire from the Polaris battery, the warheads already tipping over into their now-shallow descent angle as they passed above the assembled defenders. 'Of course,' he went on, a touch of humor creeping into his words, 'I expect you all to give them a warm, Four-Thirteen welcome.' Chuckles sounded from a few cockpits and turret baskets.

'Kilos,' he continued, 'you... Well' - now something like laughter danced about the edge of his tone - 'you boys just do what you do best.' Several of the tankers laughed themselves, accompanied by motivated cries of _hoo-ah!_ and a number of quips made too closely on top of one another to make out.

'Heavy weapons,' he addressed the two hundred or so on the walls next, 'rumor has it the clean-up crews are are getting bored - seems they don't have much to do, and were hoping that you could help them out with that.' Noises of intermingled amusement and affirmation found their way across the channel, and Rin's theretofore neutral opinion of the lieutenant colonel - to whom he'd first spoken all of three hours previous - rose by several points. His own command experience - as had that of any Raven - had always been restricted to the smallest scales of the tactical sphere, centering on individual units for which responsibility had only been assumed temporarily and then relinquished at assignment's end, but certain, recognizable universals held true at all levels. In substance Tiering had told his men and women nothing that they hadn't already known since their first enemy encounter weeks, months, or years earlier, for the range of conceivable applications for a given unit, as its members well knew, remained largely constant across any number of deployments - no matter where they were sent, tankers or heavy weapons crewers could expect to find themselves performing much the same tasks as they would at any other posting. But the officer's easy manner provided subtle reassurance that, despite the inordinately high numbers closing in on them, the battle to come would be business as usual, his light-hearted jokes a subconscious invitation to laugh away any lingering doubts or tension. On the finer nuances of higher-echelon command Rin could only speculate, but on the same, in his view, Tiering gave every appearance of a firm and confident grasp.

A few friendly words for each of the remaining defense sections gave way to a silence palpably less wary than a few minutes prior, Soldiers, soldiers, and mercenaries merely expectant as they unconcernedly ran last checks and diagnostics; at a quiet order from Lieutenant Travess the mixed propulsion systems of MTT _Kusa_ rumbled to life, her four hover MT's rising into the air almost as one behind Rin's position. As expected - and then verified by Tiering - his team and 'Aurora's would operate primarily at the southern and northern edges of the _Geist_ advance respectively, herding or holding them as best they could within the 'rise-ward sweep of the armored company's combined firing arc, and generally exploiting any weaknesses upon which they happened to stumble. They would also function as a limited reserve, of sorts, their high motility theoretically leaving them free - or relatively so - to relieve 413's forces where and when ghost opposition pressed hardest.

Rin's expert eye took in _Elysium's_ status readouts at a glance, all of which confirmed that - as ever - she was ready, willing, and able. He ran a hand lovingly over a console, a blizzard of memories swirling furiously behind features that betrayed no more than the mirrored visor that masked them. 'Once more unto the breach, eh, old girl?' he murmured quietly. He tried and failed to count all the battlefields across which they'd gazed together, all the moments of perfect calm before storm's break that they'd shared; after so many years the warm embrace of her cockpit was more a home than anywhere else on or under the Earth - more than anywhere else ever _would_ be - and he had, he reflected, more experiences in common with _Elysium_ than with anyone alive. _Or dead, for that matter._

But such was, in fact, to be expected, and the thought, for all the reminders of Laine that it might have summoned, was not a morose one. Deeper, in its way, than many personal relationships, to Rin's mind the close bond between Raven and Armored Core was as imperative as it was unique. Though on a rational level he knew that _Elysium_ could not, of course, reciprocate his affection any more than his watch or dataslate, on another he knew - every bit as certainly - that she was far more than just a finely-engineered collocation of metal, ceramic, and polymer, and that the two of them were at their best only when working in tandem with one another. Outside of the cockpit he was, if somewhat more capable than the average civilian, then still just one more forgettable individual pushing his way into the middle years of his life; without a pilot, _Elysium_ was nothing so much as an inert - if handsome - monument to Crest, Mirage, and Kisaragi workmanship.

_But together..._ Together, they had sundered the pillars of heaven itself, toppling from its throne a silicon tyrant no less execrable than any carbon-based despot had ever been; together, they had done what neither alone could have hoped in five lifetimes to accomplish, and changed the very course of human history. Rin's gray-green eyes swept the reassuring confines around him, drinking in the familiar details of MFR's and instrument panels that he knew better than his own reflection. ' "We're a couple of shooting stars",' he told _Elysium_ softly, quoting the old epic, ' "and we'll never be stopped".'

Slowly, with a panther's sinuous and predatory grace, the Armored Core rose to her feet, drawing herself to her full height and taking up her rifle in one smooth motion; her sensor eye blazed teal as power relays surged, magnetic bellows stoking the stellar fires that burned with carefully modulated fury at her heart. She gazed levelly 'rise-ward in a remarkably human approximation of unconcern, her aura aswirl with a quiet, understated lethality that all but dared the _Geisteswehr_ to tresspass the limits of _her_ domain. For, to read her confident posture the tides of battle were already mapped and its history written, the outcome a foregone conclusion that, rendered in a sure and steady hand, left before the _Geister_ but a single, binary choice: the easy way, or the hard way.

'ACT "Aurora" has eyes on Gus!' the other Raven sang out over the command channel, an excited, almost feral timbre woven through the rich, full tones of her voice. 'One o'clock relative, twenty-nine hundred meters,' she specified - 'two-nine-hundred.' As all attention snapped to the given location _Elysium's_ rifle came up to a low-ready position, her deliberate and unhurried movements equating somehow to a rough, kinaesthetic sigh of resignation.

The hard way, then.

'Kilo Company, no need to stand on ceremony,' Tiering announced with his characteristically deft blend of easy humor and command - 'consider weapons free, at your discretion and as firing solutions present themselves. Repeat: weapons free.' The captain's double-click acknowledgement had scarcely sounded before the first _Sheridan_ crew rose to the invitation with a report like a granite mountain splitting from root to summit, at that range surely firing, Rin imagined, with their barrel at or near its maximum elevation. Even stationary it would make for a difficult shot, to judge by what little he knew of the main battle tank's capabilities, effectively pressing the vehicle into service as the artillery piece that it was never meant to be - but almost before the Raven had teased 'Aurora's contact out of the dusk it vanished, replaced, in dramatic testament to Kilo's fire control, by an expanding fireball and a blurry, razor spray of shrapnel.

'I think that might just be the longest-range tank kill on record,' Emma told Rin quietly, seizing on a rare idle moment between the multitudinous demands upon her - or any good Operator's - attention; beneath and around her transmission a susurrus of indistinct congratulatory noises rippled over the various comm frequencies in the general direction of the tankers.

'Their gunners are good,' he agreed. 'You should've seen them on the way in - I don't think I saw more than a quarter dozen misses between them.' By ones and twos the other _Sheridans_ began chiming in, suiting their own one hundred fifteen millimeter contributions to their comrade's unorthodox, ballistic example; at the smartly-contracting edge of visibility, the command hub's first would-be assailants materialized with neither fanfare nor warning, pairs and trios of the _Geisteswehr's_ trademark, reverse-jointed MT's fading eerily into view out of the optical interstices between deepening gloom and failing daylight. Nearby impacts threw gouts of fire and fountaining dirt high into the air, first before them, then around them, and at last among them as Kilo Company rapidly corrected for wind and movement. Yet if their losses - presumably unexpected, well outside any reasonable projection of 413's DFP as they were - troubled them in the slightest they gave no sign of it, pushing forward despite the diminution of their ranks with admirable, if suicidal determination.

For, far from the neat, clearly-defined onset counseled by movie scripts and sound military planning alike - if for radically divergent reasons - the battle-proper had opened in fits and starts that immediately called to Rin's mind his earlier encounter, and the similarly piecemeal reaction to his intervention on Kilo Company's behalf. That the _Geister_ could and did concert with one another was plain enough - they could never have assembled and deployed so numerous a force otherwise - but once on-site they seemed almost to...well, ignore each other, as preposterous as the idea was; Rin could think of no other terms in which to describe their behavior. Further, it occurred to him, as he watched individual _Geister_ plow idiotically through the curtain of indirect fire, that he'd seen neither hide nor hair of anything resembling small-unit interchange in the broader tactical tableau before him, and the longer he observed their approach the more firmly he was convinced that their occasional congregation into groups of two or three was a product of simple happenstance; the impulse to scrub a puzzled hand through his hair was staid only by the ballistic polymer of his flight helmet.

Yet despite the masochistic bent to the ghost 'battle plan', if their artless drive 'set-ward warranted so generous a terminological allowance, their lines _were_ inching nearer the walls, and filling out despite the _Sheridans'_ spirited efforts to deplete them.

'Well leave some for the rest of us, Kilo,' 'Aurora' pouted playfully over the comm after an especially punishing salvo, though she knew as well as Rin that their own sally would not come until-

'Hard rain, hard rain!' Tiering's pronouncement rang across the channel, forestalling any likely admonition to keep the airwaves clear of extraneous transmissions. 'All heavy weapons - hard rain!'

Above the Raven, every kevlar helmet visible on the ramparts dropped promptly out of sight as infantrymen dove beneath the cover of the lanicrete palisade or for one of the squat, reinforced weapons towers that commanded each corner, short seconds ahead of a full rocket spread that had been held in reserve for precisely the opportunity that now lay no more than a thousand meters 'rise-ward. Outracing the atmospheric perturbations that bucked and rolled outward from their own line of transit, the eM.27 casings were peeling apart even as the sky above 413 cracked belatedly, wave after wave of Polaris-fire flinging submunitions the length and breadth of the ghost column. Where a single, fully-loaded PLRS could reliably carpet a square kilometer in forty-eight seconds, one battery a half-dozen strong could effectively _sterilize_ the same area, and at such brief remove the infernal display graduated to the truly spectacular. Rin looked on in macabre fascination as the charcoal downpour sleeted across the _Geist_ lines, turning loose a roiling wall of fire that bounded voraciously 'rise-ward to consume anything that bad luck or worse timing had left in its path. The prolonged, Surface-rending roar that accompanied was punctuated faintly by an irregular series of smaller, sharper detonations, and through the viewscreen filters the Raven caught at least one flash of purest, hottest white that signified the demise of a _Bär_ somewhere near the southern periphery.

At bombardment's end Rin had to consciously remind himself to breath again. Below the blanket of greasy smoke, sluggishly writhing its way upward, nothing moved, the ground a uniform shade of char broken only by the odd deposition of scrap or slag; fine-grained ash and other motes of particulate matter clung to to a stray breeze indecisively, unsure whether to remain or depart in search of more amenable haunts. Beneath the press of the otherworldly stillness that had descended over the field one could almost believe the battle finished and the contest decided, and the _Geister_ dispatched with a facility difficult to credit, yet which the momentarily inviolate calm seemed ill-disposed to repudiate.

But no victory on the 'Line, as the men and women who held it well knew, was ever bought so cheaply, and Rin, even absent their intimate familiarity with the pitiless rhythms of life thereon, had spent his life on the battlefield in sufficient part to read it as easily as he would a favorite, well-worn novel; the battle for 413 had scarcely begun.

The first signs of renewed activity glinted dully - almost hesitantly, Rin fancied - through the slowly-lifting haze, this time on the edge of his own team's area of responsibility as the ghost forces regrouped for a second push. If they subscribed to any recognizable species of common sense, he judged, they would throw their earlier caution to the wind and make a hard drive for the walls and a point-blank engagement range, thereby abrogating the potentially decisive advantage of the Polaris battery's heavy fire support; whatever the multiplicative factor of the numerical superiority that he had brought in tow, there were limits to the losses that even Gus could sustain.

Rin touched a finger to the side of the the comm screen, depressing one of the square, off-white buttons ringing the MFR; beside it, on the readout itself, an indicator box blinked to a short string of numbers bearing the abbreviated tag 'CMD'. 'ACT "Iscariot" has movement,' he reported - 'southern AOR, inbound at...' He favored the heads-forward display with a lingering glance, pulling together his best range estimate for a contact still on the far side of the blackened expanse that marked the artillery impact zone, and many hundreds of meters removed from the point beyond which _Elysium's_ own FCS performance curves dropped off into inutility. 'Call it three thousand meters,' he decided. _Close enough for government work._ Then he paused, head cocked thoughtfully as realization caught up with him. _'Government work'..._ His features screwed up into an arrangement that suggested both minor epiphany and amusement as he considered the archaic turn of phrase. _I suppose it doesn't quite play the way that it used to._

'Copy that, Raven,' Tiering broke into his musings - 'heavy weapons spotters have them too.' From the corner of his eye - or rather, he supposed, _Elysium's_ eye - Rin caught sight of helmets mottled tan, beige, and light brown peeking over the ramparts.

'ACT's clear to deploy?' Each knew as well as the other the engagement queue stipulated by 413's operations section, but in the shadow of so potent an artillery umbrella, were it friendly or no, the surest, swiftest road to statistical anonymity was _paved_ with reckless assumptions.

'Polaris battery standing down,' the lieutenant colonel gave him the all-clear. 'The field is yours for the taking, _Söldner_.'

Even Rin couldn't help himself, a grin breaking determinedly through the brooding thunderheads that perpetually overhung his person; somewhere along the line Tiering had raised tacit, infectious confidence to an art form. 'And take it we will, Four-Thirteen,' he returned, matching certitude for certitude; his voice moved across the comm with a spring to its figurative step that it hadn't known in nearly two decades. 'ACT "Iscariot" is turning and burning.'

He rapped a knuckle lightly against the MFR control keyed to his team's tactical frequency, his boots angled up on their heels, at the ready, just brushing the footpedals. 'You heard the man, _Kusa_ - let's get to work.'

Her every action executed, as a matter of course, with military-perfect starch and press, for the barest instant Lieutenant Travess let just a hint of the fires beneath show through. 'Roger that, Raven - let's give them hell.'

**K****ARI**** T****RAVESS**

She had scarcely articulated the last syllabic coda before 'Iscariot' was gone, his Armored Core all but disappearing into a wash of flame azure as the deepest, most vivid summer sky; the subset of HFD algorithms written solely to monitor EM levels translating from the external sensors slammed the viewscreen's emergency filters into place, though the efflux remained uncomfortably bright even so.

Hurling the throttle open with an enthusiasm that she would never let anywhere near a more verbal form of expression, Kari gunned her engines hard, throwing her MT after the Raven like a red-drab bullet sighted on _Knell's_ fast-receding form. Though comparatively few ever came successfully to grips with the idiosyncracies endemic to its handling characteristics, she had known from her first giddy sims in flight school that she and the unconventional hover design were meant for one another, as surely as if each had been designed with the other in mind. Where in the more run-of-the-mill varieties of biped Muscle Tracer she had only ever felt dangerously awkward, tottering and lurching about atop million-credit stilts like a dog on its hind legs, the performance profile of their leaner, faster cousins had always spoken to her on an intuitive level, a half-remembered childhood song of which the notes came to her unbidden.

Guiding the control yoke with one hand as she paced the Raven from a serviceable escort position, with the other she toggled the comm to her own tactical frequency, a dedicated subchannel permissive of contact with her team that wouldn't muck up 'Iscariot's lines of communication. ' "Harley", you and "Swath" look after the merc's right flank' - the _Sheridans_ would see to the left well enough - ' "Impulse" and I will float. Keep an eye on your wingmates, and watch your sixes.' On the surface, they no more needed her instructions than they did help to breathe, for they knew their business as surely and as thoroughly as their autonomic nervous systems knew their own - she had trained them herself, to no less a standard than the most rigorous that she and modern military science could author. But for all that, her unfailing observation of proper protocol was not so empty as many civilians would have supposed, as its martial rhythms imposed upon the world a salutary order whereby her pilots might better negotiate the chaotic tilt of the battlefield. Routine and habit were their own defense, after a fashion, familiar landmarks that instilled a sense of confidence _whatever_ the storm that might rage around them.

Because...over and above the customary responsibilities of any command, she owed them every safety net that she could possibly secure, devise, or otherwise finagle out of the ether - in truth, she simply, flatly could not bear the alternative. Long-standing military wisdom - by which she occasionally set great store, when it was something more than common sense hamstrung by successive generations of testosterone-poisoned, bullshit posturing - laid out with crystal clarity the perils that attended any compromise, however well-intentioned, of the detachment from one's subordinates that made possible the effective exercise of leadership prerogatives under fire. That a line-officer, in the pursuit of a vital objective, might one day be required to order her forces into the path of certain harm or likely death was a reality as old as warfare organized above the tribal level, and with which interest any relationship more intimate than professional camaraderie conflicted far too directly.

Yet it was precisely such emotional remove, owing to its historically attenuated ranks, that KiSec had always and signally failed to cultivate. The Security Forces stood, without equivocation, among the best in the world - Kari had never had any patience for interservice or -corporate rivalry, which enterprise she thought at turns wasteful and criminally counterproductive, but she was intelligent enough to assess with comparative objectivity the obvious strengths and weaknesses of her parent organization. And although there sheltered within the Kisaragi fold a dozen times the resources of any of the lower-tier syndicates that were forever squabbling underfoot, in its native pond the larger company was the smallest fish by an uncomfortable margin, out-funded, -numbered, and -classed by its competitors in every categorical respect - save one. From the tumult of the earliest post-Destruction years, in which the no-holds-barred scramble for resources had reduced Layered to little so much as a gruesome, society-wide experiment in natural selection, down to the _Geisteskrieg_ itself, it had been a cornerstone of Kisaragi internal policy to nurture their armed forces with a nigh parareligious mania, recognizing with the perpetual underdog's bitter certainty the truth of the ancient maxim that might was the surest guarantor of right. But if they had stalwartly weathered every crisis of the past two hundred years, their interests held secure by a redoubtable paramilitary arm that, not without justification, contemptuously dismissed the self-described 'elite' as the vanguards of a middling competency to which lesser companies might one day aspire, then their achievements had come at the expense - debatably considerable - of the boundary that delimited the traitionally discrete realms of enlisted and commissioned.

Small even by the pre-war standards of the EGDF, KiSec at times took on the aspect more of an extended family than anything else, a fighting force more tightly-knit than almost any other in what survived of human history, and one in which almost everyone knew very nearly everyone else. Yet it had once been observed that everything was a double-edge sword, and the ties that bound so closely were an especially keen blade in the field, cutting just as readily - and often without warning - in either direction. Soldier for soldier, the Security Forces could and regularly did outfight any opposition ranged against them, renowned almost proverbially as fierce and canny enemies - but unit for unit they also bore the lightest casualty rates of any standing military, often disengaging, on the rare occasion when losses did begin to mount, where a comparable Crest or Mirage contingent would have persevered, because the on-scene commander was unable to bring him- or herself to so freely spend the lives of their comrades. On the whole it tended to add an element of the unpredictable to Kisaragi strategy, by happy chance reinforcing the KiSec mythos further - and in the entirety of the company's history only a handful of its foes had ever managed to suss out and exploit the source of its operational schizophrenia - but it remained a chink in the corporate armor all the same.

And, Kari knew, in her own - now more than ever. From behind the visor of her Kisaragi-issue flight helmet, eyes the color of untamed forest sought an upper corner of the heads-forward display, lighting on the virtual inset slaved to her MT's onboard radar suite; ahead of her position at readout's center, a flashing indicator marked 'Iscariot' as a mission-critical asset, the green contacts of MTT _Kusa_ fanning out between them as per their orders. Even wrung through the intervening detection apparatus and appurtenant interpretive software her pilots fairly exuded confident self-possession, their maneuvers executed with the crisp, parade ground precision that she'd relentlessly drilled into them.

Her pilots...

She'd never wanted her present command, truth be told. Oh, she'd always supposed that it might pass to her _one_ day, an indeterminate number of years thence, but such lines of thought had always remained safely speculative, firmly ensconced within the abstracted confines of a future too impossibly remote to ever actually come to pass - right up until the moment that it hit her like a ton of bricks.

Kari had read, once, that in everyone's life there was an 'it' moment, a metaphysical point of no-return that sundered irrevocably everything that had gone before from all that might follow thereafter; beyond the impalpable terminator, sharper and more poignant than any dawn line that had or would trace the contours of the physical world, nothing could ever again be as it had before. Committed to a work of fiction though they were, the verity of the author's words had resonated no less profoundly for the manufacture of the events to which they had been applied, and Kari had carried them with her ever since.

Yet it was not, in spite of the thousand personal tragedies to which it testified, among the slowly cooling ruin of Crest's regional headquarters that they had been borne out, but in the temporary squadron berths of an anonymous KiSec waystation while en route from Lawdas to 413 Forward. As a cathartic episode of alternating reminiscence and toasts raised in honor of the departed - since time out of memory a peculiarly martial form of extended epitaph - gradually ceded the room to a more introspective silence, 'Swath' had come back from wherever his ruminations had led him and turned on Kari a look that she would take with her to the grave. 'What now, "K-T"?' Jake asked, his face a perfect, aching study in the youthful and ingenuous.

_What now, 'K-T'?_

The ostensibly innocuous query could not have landed with greater force had it thundered from the heights of Olympus, and the heavens rent from one horizon to the other; as one, every set of eyes around the plain, corporate-gray table swung to her, each face a mirror image of the expectation that lit the one beside it. To the last man and woman, her pilots knew - _knew_ - with a child's implicit, unshakeable faith that the sun would rise on the wrong side of the planet before Kari let them down.

_Her_ pilots.

The terrifying truth of it, articulated with excrutiating, lapidary concision, crystalized for her in that one eternal moment: _Tela_ was _her_ responsibility, now - hers and no other's. More than an administrator or a paternal figure, Captain Quinn had been the team's rock, the sure, steady presence that every pilot knew would see them through anything that Gus or the 'Line could possibly throw at them - and then he was gone, lost to a quirk of fate indifferent and capricious as Tychë herself, the pieces of their former lives scattered with callous disregard for Kari to pick up as best she could.

Her line of sight drifted back to the radar inset as ACT 'Iscariot' screamed for hard contact at nearly a third the speed of sound, 'Impulse' glued to her wing like an outboard fuel tank, 'Harley' and 'Swath' trailing _Knell_ a few hundred meters ahead of them, and without warning her breath caught short, foundering on the shoals of a throat constricted to near occlusion in anxiety's iron grip. For the hundredth time since Quinn's death the weight of his _de facto_ bequest threatened to smother her, and for one panicked instant she felt certain that this time she would succumb, buckling beneath its inhuman press: how could she possibly hold up, left to carry the burden alone? She just wasn't ready, Surface help her - whatever she was supposed to be, whatever she was meant to do, she simply had no idea how.

But it was an instant only. Her elegant, aristocratic features drawn taut into a soundless snarl they were never intended to accommodate, she banished the last specter of doubt to the furthest, darkest corner of her mind, her resolution an effulgent brand that she buried to the hilt in its chest against her mental walls.

_Enough! _ The command echoed like Jupiter's own against the inside of her skull, cutting any further protest off at the knees; the specter spasmed once, then lay still. Indecision and dubiety were luxuries that she could no longer afford, their market price driven higher than the dearest that she could hope to meet -_ Kusa's_ pilots, torn free of the anchor that Quinn had provided and set helplessly adrift, needed a replacement as sure as the original, and Kari would be damned if they wouldn't have it. She would do right by them whatever the cost, and if getting her pilots back home hale and whole were the only good to come out of the entire damned war, she would account it a resounding success.

Confidence alloyed with a steely resolve, and reforged all the stronger for the near break, her eyes swept the field ahead, coolly evaluating relative positions in the remaining seconds before 'Iscariot' closed with the frontmost _Geist_ ranks. She would _not_ let her pilots down, whatever it took.

A gaggle of MT's strutting ahead of their fellows and already loosing sporadic ranging shots paralleled a similar group a few hundred meters north, the leading points of a shallow crescent in which they evidently thought to box _Knell_ were her counterpart fool enough to test the line between. Kari suppressed with only partial success a contemptuous sneer for so transparent a bit of tactical legerdemain - the _greenest_ KiSec pilot would spot their ham-fisted attempt at deception from a kilometer away, and, though she'd had just under an hour to decide what to make of him, she couldn't imagine that a Raven who'd survived to Paine's age would be taken in any more readily...except for the fact that he'd swallowed not only the bait, but the hook and line in the bargain. Kari sat forward sharply, frowning hard at the view through the off-orange lines of the HFD as 'Iscariot' sped straight into the ostensible 'gap' in the ghost formation's firing patterns; her jaw fell slack as dismay warred with incredulity, and 'Harley' and 'Swath' wavered visibly in their escort slot at the mercenary's four o'clock, plainly torn between their duties and... _And common fucking sense -_ _what's that Surface-forsaken idiot thinking?_ Another second and Gus would close ranks behind them, trapping them in a gridded kill zone and cutting them to pieces - couldn't 'Iscariot' see the trap snapping shut around him? A rapid-fire sequence of increasingly abysmal scenarios flickered across Kari's mental viewscreen of their own accord, the most optimistic of which ended with a sorrowful letter drafted for only _one_ set of bereaved parents - but even as a hand darted futilely for the comm the mission channel came alive, as though to anticipating the angry remonstration already quivering on her lips.

The Raven offered but two words by way of explication, and those perhaps the very last that Kari might have expected - yet from capital to period they reverberated with chilling, absolute certainty.

'Trust me.'

_Knell_ plunged into the _Geist_ lines ahead of her like a professional diver into a vertical pool, her gray-blue body sliding beneath the titanium-ceramic composite surface with scarcely a ripple to mark her passage. With a flick of her wrist that could just as easily have been given by a human arm her energy blade _buzz-hummed_ to life, an azurescent bar of plasma brilliant as the noonday sky, pitiless as the noonday sun, and she fell upon her foes with less mercy still - sheep left to the wolves might have been less helpless. As quickly as one MT had fallen the next was pitching forward, or sideways, or backwards, the ungainly machines collapsing in groups of two and three at a time, and the last often before the first had struck the ground.

Bringing up the ACT's rear, Kari could only gape openly, her slim jaw nearly resting on the lower edge of her helmet. Honest enough to recognize her own skill as a pilot without the arrogance or gross inflation that attended most such self-assessment in her profession, she had never been impressed overmuch by any of the Ravens to cross _Tela's_ path over the years, finding in the reality behind their claims nothing that she and her team couldn't match or best any day of the week - but here, now, watching 'Iscariot' froze her blood. _Knell_ stalked the ghost ranks with a lion's cool, unhurried deliberation, secure in the knowledge that she stood alone at the pinnacle of the food chain, only to strike and slip like a viper without warning - never dodging or evading, truly, but simply occupying whatever space her adversary's line of fire did not. She moved with the lethal economy of a natural-born swordswoman, her every motion measured and executed with a precision and fluidity to send the most gifted dancer a violent shade of green, and for long fractions of a second at a time Kari found it as difficult to remember that _Knell_ was just - 'just' - a lifeless Armored Core as she did to breathe. As a child (and still as an adult, she might confess in an unwary moment) her favorite stories had been of the great warrioress Yui and her longsword _Telachai_, the most accomplished blademistress of Esheva and the woman who had time and again stopped armies cold at the city gates - but she had only ever been just that: a story.

_Knell_ and 'Iscariot' were _real_.

Before her very eyes, every predator of which she'd ever read - living or extinct, real or fictive - had been distilled to its purest essence, and refined one and all into a single, nightmare creature. The length and breadth of the southern wing she ranged - 'hunted' seemed a better word, Kari thought - Death herself divested of her customary veil to prowl freely among the living.

And the trap - Kari almost barked a disdainful laugh - the _trap_, such as it was, might have been sodden paper, for all the impediment to _Knell's_ advance that it served. At crescent's center, against which the forward salients, folding inward, were plainly meant to pin her, the line crumpled immediately or near enough as made no material difference, patently unequal to the capture of its quarry; the points themselves, falling back in ragged, desperate haste toward the blue maelstrom howling behind them, fell easy prey to the two KiSec pilots on which they had been careless enough to turn their collective back. Heeling their own MT's about, 'Harley' and 'Swath' set upon the _Geist_ bipeds between them and the Raven with the ruthless efficiency that had made the terror of the Security Forces' name, sanitizing 'Iscariot's six almost before it came under threat.

Ahead of them, the loose crescent formation simply...effervesced, dissipating before the Armored Core like the last wisps of morning fog left to the mercies of the rising sun. _Knell_, unstoppable force made brutally, inexorably manifest, waded - _flowed_ - into the main body of the southern wing, driving all before her with a calm, dead certainty that made Kari's skin go cold. She was a stark, blue and gray bluff, proud and immovable before the ghost tide - if it were the _bluff_ that crashed down upon the _waves_. Her blade wove a dazzling, star-hot tapestry around her, tracing impossibly intricate stitches with blinding speed, and wherever it fell, so too did an MT. Kari had always spared little save a word of snide derision for any Raven backwards or pretentious enough to bother with the clunky energy blades still manufactured for AC use, privately scoffing at the practice as a pointless throwback to a more primitive era - rather than cart around a jumped up cutting torch, she reasoned, near to worthless for anything beyond industrial scut work, why not substitute a ranged weapon of some _actual_ utility?

Now, she understood.

Whirling and pirouetting in ways that Kari never knew were conceivable for an Armored Core, much less possible, _Knell_ occupied the center of a twenty-meter circle in which nothing else lived. Any ghost MT that thought or dared to test its limits she left a sparking wreck for its trouble, holding her 'personal' borders jealously inviolate even as she savagely had her way with theirs, and amidst a furious, gray-black blizzard of soot kicked up by their exchange she cut her way through the _Geist_ ranks - grimly; elegantly; methodically; beautifully.

Dumbstruck, Kari could only look on in wordless stupefaction, wondering somewhat punchily what need the Raven might possibly have of her and her team - left to his own devices, it seemed he might well carve a path from one end of _Geistland_ to the other and back again. She hadn't the faintest idea what the man had done before the war, or before he'd dropped out of the sky into 413's AOR, but she wondered uneasily just how closely, in all their years and at all their duty stations, she and _Tela_ might have strayed toward the wrong side of one of his assignments. She'd have bet credits to cookies that they would have given him a run for his money, and perhaps even lived to recount the tale, had all twelve been present and at the top of their game, but...

Through the viewscreen, she watched as a whiplash stroke took a _Bä__r_ - Kari blinked: where the fuck had _that_ come from? - in a midriff that stood nearly level with _Knell's_ shoulders, and tracked the 'Core as she skimmed and spun away, parting company with the monstrous machine as quickly as they'd met; before the sun-like glare of its death throes had faded, two more MT's lay in ruins beyond the blast radius.

Kari swallowed audibly. Yes, _Tela_ might well have survived the encounter - they might even have brought 'Iscariot' down in the process, although she doubted it - but they would likely have left half their number dead or dying on the field behind them. The thought sent ice skittering through her veins, and she breathed a word of thanks to whatever benevolent forces might have governed the universe that they'd instead come together under more amiable circumstances. 'Surface help the poor bastard that winds up on his bad side...' she muttered, following his progress among - and more typically through - the increasingly tattered ranks and files of the southern wing. A pity that _he_ hadn't been part of of the Raven contingent dispatched in a last-ditch effort to defend the Controller, when that _Geist_-spawned madman Unin had brought the sky - and damn near everything else - tumbling down around them; things might've turned out-

'You getting paid by the hour, "K-T"?'

Kari jumped, and with another chagrined jolt realized that she had slowed to a relative crawl, unconsciously cutting back the throttle to gawk like the freshest first-year rookie still growing into her wings. _Idiot,_ she upbraided herself, subvocalizing a growl - _stop goggling like an addled schoolgirl!_ But 'Iscariot's voice held no rebuke that she could hear, only a good-natured reminder - and one far gentler at that than the tongue-lashing that she would have given one of her own pilots for such a lapse.

'Yeah, _that'll_ be the day,' she sniffed with studied sarcasm, hoping that she'd managed the right balance of flippancy and unconcern to mask the embarrassment warming her cheeks. But his choice of comm frequency, she noted with a quick glance to the panel, had also landed on a private channel set aside for only the two of them, commander to commander. 'Ah...don't worry, Raven,' she reassured him in a more level tone, allowing some measure of her contrition to show through, 'I'll keep on the ball.' She hoped that some of her gratitude had found its way across the line as well, as most, merc and uniform alike, would have reigned her attention in with...considerably less discretion.

'I know,' was all 'Iscariot' said before he closed the private channel, evidently satisfied; Kari eyed _Knell_ thoughtfully as she and her escorts continued to dismantle the _Geist_ advance piece by piece, though it was the Raven within that held the lion's share of her attention. In the short hour or so that they'd been acquainted she'd had occasion to revise her opinion of the man at least thrice - once, briefly, for the worse, and twice overwhelmingly for the better - and she had begun to realize that each new impression was less a truth unto itself than a glimpse of a deeper, more multifaceted puzzle.

The man was no stranger to the dignities of command - clearly. Though Kari had only their brief time together on the 'Line by which to judge, his thus-far hands-off approach suggested that he knew better than to micromanage - a lesson with which a startling number of non-KiSec officers struggled, in her experience, and usually to the detriment of morale and efficiency - and the consideration with which he'd set her focus to rights betokened an unusually conscientious respect for the boundaries of the unit that was but technically and temporarily 'his': where many, in a vain attempt to augment their authority at the expense of her own, would have pounced on the chance to openly call her down, 'Iscariot' had demonstrated uncommon tact. All things considered, his gave every appearance of a sure and steady grasp on the fundaments of good leadership - for a mercenary, anyway - and Kari would more than allow that he might make for a passable KiSec officer, if he could stomach the greater rigidity of military life.

Oh, and he was apparently the Great Destruction on two legs.

Taking inventory of the jumbled train of wreckage that _Knell_ was trailing behind her, Kari shivered involuntarily, and again she felt an acute stab of curiosity for the Raven's origins. Where _had_ he come from? And what had he been doing all this time? Surely, word of his...his- She groped blankly for a word that her own experiences were ill-equipped to supply. Surely word of his...talent...should have found its way into the Security Forces along _some_ grapevine or another, sooner or later - he had to have set up shop somewhere the very _definition_ of 'remote' to escape notice. Layered, for all the records that the unprecedented scope of its engineering had broken, was still far too small, and the temperate coastal climes to south and 'set-ward, early and concerted targets for Surface reclamation, much too populous; higher latitudes were a possibility...but little enough of _anything_ happened at the northern limits of civilization that news of someone like him would certainly have spread like the wildfires with which humanity was newly reacquainted. And she was positive that he hadn't shown up on the 'Line before today, as the martial rumor mill, be it Defense Force, KiSec, or otherwise, ranked among the very fastest means of moving information from Point A to any and every other.

A contemplative frown pulled a delicate furrow down across Kari's brow. A multifaceted puzzle indeed.

But she filed it away for later consideration, letting her gaze linger only a moment longer on the mesmerizing display before firmly - albeit reluctantly, and with some effort - tearing it away to regard the increasingly restive tip of the _Geist_ southern wing. His initial attempt at guile reduced to a collection of smoking scrap around _Knell_, Gus had evidently woken to the nature of the predator in his midst at last, in reply to which the entire distal end of the larger formation was beginning to lever ahead and 'set-ward, wheeling about in a broad arc meant to swing around and box the Raven in against the main line.

Kari's derisive and decidedly unladylike snort would surely have earned a disapproving frown from her mother, if they were still on speaking terms - but Gus never learned. Why he felt that the same tack, little more than his earlier ruse scaled up, would succeed now where it had abjectly failed not five minutes gone was beyond her, but she was content to milk his creative deficit for all that it was worth.

Dialing the comm back to _Kusa's_ dedicated tac frequency, she raised her wingmate. 'Gus's getting a little antsy at the fringe, "Impulse" - we're up. Stay on my four, and keep my wings clear.' But the milliseconds drew out with no response, and the other woman's MT held to the same lazy course that Kari's had maintained. 'Hey, Surface to "Impulse",' she tried again - 'you aw-'

'Surface _Above_, "K-T",' her wingmate breathed hoarsely, as though Kari hadn't spoken, 'are you seeing what I'm seeing? I had no idea they could do..._that_...' She trailed off, evidently at the same loss for words as her lieutenant.

Kari threw a sympathetic look over her shoulder. Technically, she should have gotten after her pilot for her inattention, but... She grinned ruefully. Given her own reaction, she didn't really have the heart to chastise the woman. 'There'll be time for that later, Mags,' she said gently - 'right now, I need you on my wing.' The invocation of her wingmate's nickname was a risk, if Gus happened to be eavesdropping, but a small one - in all the thousands stationed on the Silent Line, she was sure that there must be more than one 'Maggie'.

And, at all events, it did the trick - the sound of her own name seemed to snap 'Impulse' out of her stupor. 'Right - sorry, "K-T".' Her shaky, fortifying breath was faintly audible over the line. 'What've we got?'

'Gus's looking to swing up from the south,' Kari repeated her earlier assessment patiently, 'and the Raven needs us to keep his six clear while he's...occupied.' It _sounded_ plausible, at any rate. _There's no way 'Iscariot' can handle the whole southern flank by himself_... She glanced back north in time to see _Knell_ practically vivisect a pair of MT's, and suppressed another shiver. _Probably._ 'Follow me in,' she ordered - 'standard approach pattern.'

'On your four, roger,' Maggie confirmed, any and all sign of her previous distraction subsumed beneath the trademark, laser focus of the KiSec pilot corps; Kari nodded to herself, satisfied that her wingmate's head was back in the proverbial game.

Throwing her MT into a power turn that pushed her deep into the padding of the shock couch, Kari opened her throttle back up and arrowed straight for the _Geist_ pivot point. As the hinges of a door or gate were often the weakest part of the larger assemblage, so the figurative join between two differentially-angled lines of battle was perforce the thinnest, with the rear ranks drawn apart to maintain cohesion along their respective axes of attack; with the application of sufficient pressure the point of contact would deform and ultimately break, admitting of a fatal irruption into the unprotected kill zone behind the ghost lines.

Or so ran the theory. The tactical logic was sound, a basic reality of fire and maneuver at least as old as the city-state, though the relative numbers of _Geister_ and KiSec pilots were less balanced than Kari would have preferred - but then, 'Iscariot' wasn't the only one undaunted by numerical disparity, and throughout their long history the Security Forces had no less than thriven on the wrong side of the odds.

Verniers on the left flank of Kari's MT licked at the air with narrow tongues of saffron flame as she leaned into the virtual rudder, yawing into an offset angle of approach to skirt a pair of rockets flung in her direction by one of the nearer _Geist_ bipeds. Her answering volley, whether through miscalculation of relative vectors or owing to an errant gust of wind, flew wide of the offending party, but, in tandem with the sheer volume of Muscle Tracer that he'd mustered to throw at 413, the comparatively close order in which Gus was advancing all but guaranteed that even a poorly sighted shot would land for effect _somewhere_; a dozen meters behind Kari's antagonist, another MT had the misfortune to blunder into her near-miss as it was shifting position, and collapsed wetly into a molten caricature of itself. From over her right shoulder 'Impulse's clean-up fire hit home, lancing the original target's magazines with spectacular results - a flash of columnar flame threw billows of thick, black smoke in all directions, and the shock of all its weapons stores cooking off simultaneously burst the hapless machine like an overripe grapefruit.

'Way to janitor that one right out from under me,' Kari ribbed the other woman playfully, clipping off a precise quartet of plasma bolts for a conveniently staggered biped duo; three found their mark, the fourth missing by a hair to plow a hot, vitreous trench into the desert floor some distance beyond.

'Well maybe if you'd aim better,' Maggie laughed, 'I wouldn't have to make your kills for you;' Kari grinned. They both knew her accuracy was the second highest of all of _Tela's_ pilots to date - better, if by a vanishingly small margin, than even Captain Quinn's had been; only 'Swath' boasted of better groupings or shot placement. By way of reply she followed up one of Maggie's shots with her own, pointedly drilling two neat holes through an MT between the pair left by the other woman; the ungainly Muscle Tracer fell to the ground in a boneless heap, its onboard computer's erstwhile nerve centers bubbling out of its 'wounds' in a dribble of liquid alloy and silicates. Maggie sniffed in feigned disinterest, as though elaborately unimpressed. '_Now_ you're just showing off...'

Now it was Kari's turn to laugh, even as Gus' rapidly intensifying repulsive fire sent both pilots peeling off in divergent evasive patterns. She put her MT through a stomach-wrenching series of eluctive maneuvers, nimbly ducking and skirting the tendrils of tracers and rocket trails that stretched out to ensnare her, and with giddy abandon she fell into - _gave_ herself to - the familiar rhythms of battle. Her parents, both descended from Kisaragi families of the very bluest blood that issued, in unbroken flow, from the company founders themselves, had been mortified by her decision to join the KiSec ranks like a 'commoner', and even if they hadn't stricken her name from the familial rosters in all but fact, they would - could - never have understood that _this_ was what she was meant to do.

Kari had been groomed from the cradle on to one day assume her father's office and station - for a time she had even believed that it was what _she_ wanted - but with the onset of her twentieth year and adulthood, the old luster of the glass and steel heights of the Kisaragi tower in Caralaine had tarnished irreparably. Endless board meetings and dynastic alliances, stock prices and interminable corporate dinners, rivers of earnings reports and profit-loss analytics - the prospect of any or all, she had realized at last, left her staggeringly weary when extrapolated to the considerable remainder of her natural life, and lay on a path that she simply could not walk.

And so she had given her meticulously preärranged future away wholesale for the 'vulgar' camaraderie of the squadron bay, and if her parents' rejection still ached - often deeply - in a part of her that she kept carefully hidden, then the Security Forces into which she'd been adopted were effectively a family unto themselves, and a counterweight to the one that was lost to her. It was here with them, amidst the career and crash of the battlefield, that she truly belonged, and she wouldn't trade _Tela_ for the world.

Pulling out of her sweeping horizontal loop onto her original attack vector, she picked up Maggie as the other pilot came out of her own, and again she drove hard for the weak point in the _Geist_ lines, riding the redlines of powerplant and radiator alike. Rubescent fulguration hyphened furiously between the KiSec MT's and the ghost ranks, answered by magnesium-yellow tracers and the blurry shriek of unguided rockets. Gus outnumbered them to no inconsiderable degree, but at the vital juncture his lines had thinned perceptibly, and despite a wince for the burst of machine gun fire that rattled alarmingly along the side of her MT, Kari held stubbornly to her course. If they kept up the pressure for just a _little_ longer, pushed just a _little_ harder...

With an exultant whoop from Maggie the pair shot through a gap into the open desert behind, and if Kari only just quashed an uncharacteristic impulse to echo her, then she allowed a tight, wolfish grin. _We've _got_ him. _Without a word their formation split again, this time taking them on the offensive - high-energy cannons pulsed continuously as each hover MT traced through a tight, one hundred eighty degree arc, raking the ghost rear hard with collimated plasma. One unlucky machine chanced to stumble into the intersection of both streams of fire, vanishing in a cloud of titanium and ceramic vapor that prompted another laugh from Maggie.

'Surface Above, I think we put the fear of the _Controller_ into that one.'

'Last mistake _he'll_ ever make,' Kari agreed with a chuckle; her dark green eyes roved across the _Geist_ wingtip from end to end, the forest cool and considering. With half of _Kusa_ now loose behind his lines, the courses of action open to Gus had been handily reduced to just three distinctly unpalatable options, and she was curious to see which he thought the lesser evil. He could continue to wheel his forces inward, in the hopes of penning in 'Iscariot', 'Swath', and 'Harley' as originally intended - and thereby leave her and Maggie to run amok at his back all the while, gambling that he could dispatch the Raven and his escorts before the other two mangled his wing too badly; he could yank the same body around in a smart about-face to deal with the new threat - and leave _Knell_ to systematically dismantle the main body of his southern flank unimpeded; or he could divide his attention between the two, banking on numerical superiority to overwhelm both.

A more or less company-sized detachment abruptly broke away, lurching and sidestepping through an awkward, if rapid, one-eighty in answer to Kari's unspoken question; she sniffed smugly. She supposed that it made sense enough by the numbers, given their relative paper strengths - she might even have chosen similarly, had she never set foot on the field - but considering the qualitative gulf in evidence, by her lights Gus would have done better to throw all his weight against one or the other, where his numerical advantage might well have made up the difference. As it stood, she and Maggie faced no worse than six-to-one odds, and those only until they whittled the ratio down further - all in all an even match, for any KiSec pilot worthy of the name.

Not that it would be a walk through the nature preserve. Kari ducked away reflexively as a rocket screamed not a meter overhead, almost fancying that she had felt it - and the two on its heels - brush across the top of her helmet, and she put a bit more rudder into her approach as she returned fire. She and Maggie had at least a dozen weapon muzzles apiece trained on them, and blind, mindless luck could kill just as effectively in a rookie's hands as in a veteran's.

Although which they faced was something of a mystery, even to her practiced eye. Gus had a weird stick personality of which she'd never been able to make heads or tails, and for every ten flawlessly-executed maneuvers to his name, he made at least as many blunders that Kari would have drilled out of her pilots in the first month. _Six steps forward, half a dozen back.._ she mused, not sure whether she spoke more of Gus or herself - or perhaps both. She frowned again as a plasma bolt speared an MT, wondering for the hundredth time who had taught the _Geister_ to fly...but that puzzle, too, she reluctantly tabled, knowing full well the dangers that distraction under fire carried in tow; it would keep.

Turning the whole of her attention on the more immediate problem of the ghost 'company' before her - it was more or less of a size with what KiSec TO&E would have accounted a full Muscle Tracer Team, though it surely moved and concerted like none that she would have graced with the term - she continued to methodically appraise, prioritize, and target the weakest links in the proverbial chain, vectors and known specifications and tactical options all dancing in her mind's eye like a fluid, three-dimensional graph overlaid atop the battlefield. It was the work of five minutes to halve the numbers arrayed against them, with as much of the time given over to evasion as to offense, and in the space of two more Kari knew that, short of an act of the Controller, her sector was as good as cleared. In every engagement there came a...a balance point, was all that she could ever think to call it - a point at which the the prevailing trend of mounting losses and ground ceded, in whatever direction, assumed a critical mass that effectively decided the contest - and she had felt theirs with the destruction of what may or may not have been the lead MT; whether they knew it or not, the paltry handful left were little more than the dead still walking.

When the last had fallen, Kari pushed back her visor and wiped the sweat from her brow before it could run into her eyes, and angled toward the larger force still trying to sweep around behind 'Iscariot' and her other pilots; she tried in vain to push a few wayward strands of black hair into place behind her ear as she sized up their progress, sparing a quick scowl for the helmet that fit just a touch too snugly to let her reach as far as she needed. But with her half of _Kusa_ otherwise engaged on the far side of the wingtip, 'Swath' and 'Harley' had given a fine accounting of themselves, holding the _Geist_ 'jaw' stubbornly agape while 'Iscariot'...worked - though even a small misstep, plainly, would be all the give that it needed to snap shut; her arrival, she realized, was...timely.

Although as she caught sporadic glimpses of brilliant, estuant cobalt between or above the intervening MT's, she again wondered - more seriously than not - just how much the Raven truly needed the four of them guarding his back, and whether he might not just cut his way right back out the way he came in even if the _Geist_ lines _did_ close around him; her throat felt a bit dry as she spoke into the comm. 'Hang tight, gentlemen,' she told 'Harley' and 'Swath', ratcheting the throttle open and flipping her visor back into place - 'the cavalry's coming.'

_Kusa_ set upon the enemy host between them with grim, almost ghoulish efficiency, like a pack of fabled pirhanas from some lost corner or another of the the pre-Destruction world. Absent the more capable _Bären_ to shepherd them properly - any remaining on that part of the field, Kari imagined, would have been repositioned long since to check _Knell's_ progress, for all the good they would do in the attempt - the unruly pack of MT's made for relatively vulnerable prey, if numerous, and may as well have _been_ the grass to which 'Harley' had referred earlier; the 'balance point', by Kari's own read, came and went with the first shots exchanged.

As the lingering dregs of twilight gave way fully to night, the southern wing at last gave up the ghost, frayed beyond any and all recognition as a viable offensive body; as _Knell_ stilled the only MT yet on its feet with a short, almost casual stroke, _Kusa_ drew rein behind her in an open semicircle, taking stock of the carnage around them. The sooty expanse where the massed artillery barrage had fallen was almost indistinguishable from the rest of the gritty, hardpacked earth, crissed and crossed and then criss-crossed again, over and over, by a hopeless snarl of trails left by each of the principle combatants - innumerable blocky footprints, marching like oversized dotted lines where biped Muscle Tracers had plodded resolutely to their doom; alternating series of thick bars and dashes where the huge, slab-like feet of the _Bären_ had alternately skimmed and stepped; a two-dimensional whirlwind, too involuted to untangle, that could only belong to _Knell_ and 'Iscariot'; and broader, more diffuse patterns of upset in the ashy loam to mark where _Kusa_ had flown, tracing graceful, lazy spirals punctuated by tight knots where a pilot had knuckled hard about, either to evade or pounce on an unwary pursuer. Kari picked out a roughly circular spot, at once bizarrely warped and smoother than nature had ever intended, that sketched out a _Bär's_ final resting place as surely as any gravestone might have - and with a sudden chill she noticed that it stood amidst a _field_ of patches so-defined, wondering, as she unconsciously rubbed her arms, just how many of the things 'Iscariot' had encountered.

But it was a good, honest day's work, all told, and she was on the point of saying as much when the Raven beat her to it. 'Brilliant work, _Kusa_,' he sent over the tactical channel, all but pulling the words straight from her mouth; his admiration was reserved, Kari noted, undoubtedly filtered through all the years, battles, drills, and the Surface alone knew what else that had produced the display he'd put on - but it was also genuine.

'You're no slouch yourself, Raven.' She shot a grin in _Knell's_ general direction, in part for the merc - though he obviously couldn't see it, her voice conveyed it well enough - and in part for an understatement that surely tipped the scales as the single largest of her career.

True to form, however, 'Harley' was considerably less circumspect. 'Surface-fucking-_Above_, man!' Wil fairly exploded, evidently unable to contain himself any longer - 'where the hell did you learn to fly like that?' The comm sounded with a clatter of knowing laughter, and even Kari allowed another chuckle. By the book, she probably should have gotten on his case for the breach of proper decorum - even the relative informality of the KiSec ranks tended to look askance at too free a use of profanity in an officer's presence - but in this particular instance, she wouldn't have felt entirely right taking him to task for saying what the rest of them were already thinking anyhow.

The Raven might or might not have given an amused grunt, but there was unquestionably a smile in his reply. 'A girl named Yui,' was all he said; this time Kari's jaw hit the chin of her helmet. The cycle of stories attached to the Eshevene swordmistress was little known outside of the Kisaragi sphere, and even there it belonged chiefly to a bygone era, running decidedly toward the esoteric for all that it embodied the traditional KiSec virtues of quality sought in the room of quantity, and triumph over long odds - she wouldn't have honestly expected to find another who remembered them in _Caralaine_, and certainly never a Raven, of all people, hailing from the-Surface-knew-where. The merc was a veritable smorgasbord of surprises.

Kari abruptly gave vent to a laugh, a rich and full, almost musical sound of genuine delight that she hadn't thought to make ever again after Lawdas. The chance mention of her childhood heroine was a curious fulcrum for her mood to balance upon, but there it was all the same, like a private word of reassurance meant solely for her: she couldn't have explained why if her life depended on it, but it somehow seemed, in that moment, that she'd learned everything would work out afterall. 'She must've been quite a woman,' Kari observed around a grin, broad as before; mentally she tallied up the second largest understatement of her career, and that by a rather narrow margin.

_...on they came, a living tide that it seemed neither force of nature nor strength of arms could stem - and yet, she did. Soft grays and creams chased woodland browns and greens through an intricate, chromatic whirlwind beneath a light panoply of flat gray plate as Yui moved, flowing like water even as her blade fell like a hammer, and if in the first glance she seemed out of place as she paced the front ranks with sword in hand, like unhorsed cavalry clinging desperately to the hope of safety, then in the second the lethal grace that cloaked her like another skin gave the error. Her hand-and-a-half _shutara,_ razor-straight and sharp to make glass seem dull,_ _was an extention of herself that she wielded or wore with equal ease, and wherever it struck, wherever she set foot, the Sumaran lines yielded - slowly, obdurately, but surely._

_ Her staff had all but begged her on bended knee to remain ahorse on _this_ day, if on no other, to just this once act the general and command from afar - but there was simply too much riding on the outcome, too much that was too dear hanging precariously pendent in the balance. _She_ knew that she was no general, whatever anyone else believed, that _she_ had never been schooled in the myriad and subtle arts of war - she was just a country girl who had grown up on a farm a long day's ride from the city, and at heart that was all she would ever be. The mantle of leadership had been thrust _upon_ her more than taken up, and she would have cast it aside in a stroke but for the way that the faces of citizen and soldier alike lit when she passed; she didn't know how to measure up to half what she read in their eyes, but nor did she know how to divest herself of the role, however it might chafe, without robbing the Eshevar of the hope that they had built upon it. She was trapped, as surely as if encircled by a thousand Sumaran horse, and most days she wasn't sure that she wouldn't prefer the Sum__é__ne lancers to the burden of expectation afterall._

_ But she _did_ know the sword, as well as the soil - for good or ill, she knew it better than anyone in Esheva, perhaps better than anyone alive. Whatever titles the city might attach to her name, she would serve her people best where the fighting was thickest, and had accordingly foregone the customary honor of the right wing to lead the charge down the center. As closely ordered phalanxes of Eshevene pike crashed againt Sumaran halberd beneath a stormcloud of arrows, Yui darted like a steel-scaled fish among the waves, _Telachai_ flashing in her hands like the summer sun, and where she stood, Sumar fell. From form to form she danced, as beautiful to behold as terrible, a fell, icy wind whispering through the forest of polearms to strike with serpentine celerity. _Natir shina vechi, _ran the grim promise inscripted upon her blade, a challenge ancient as the founding of the city itself, and to the last jot and tittle the terror of her arm proclaimed it true._

_ None shall pass._

_ And neither the rush of..._

No Sumaran had set foot on Eshevene soil while Yui had lived - or even for decades after her death, for the terror of her name. Quite a woman and more.

'She was at that,' the Raven agreed simply, his tone suggesting amusement for the statement of a fact they both knew to be self-evident; then he grew more serious, if not too much so to partake still of the joke in which they shared. 'And if she taught me anything,' he went on, 'it was that a soldier's work is never done.' _Knell_ shifted her stance, passing in an instant from a leopard taking her ease to Death herself, coiled into a lithe, gray-blue spring; she faced square-on to 'rise-ward, and Kari followed the Armored Core's line of sight to the dull, telltale glint of ceramic-alloy armor plating beneath the slowly waxing star- and moonlight.

_Of course._ Another wave, and of a size with the first at the very least, by the hints that showed through the nocturnal gloom. She'd had no time for any conscious thought much beyond the first onset and their subsequent survival, once the shock of 'Iscariot' and _Knell_ had passed, but it stood to reason - only a Surface-forsaken fool would drop anything but the heavy end of the _heaviest_ hammer, if they entertained any serious notion of taking 413.

Kari's hand twitched by force of habit toward the comm panel to key up _Kusa's_ dedicated tac frequency and move her pilots into position, but she withdrew it as soon as it had moved - that was 'Iscariot's job for the moment, not hers; he had extended her every courtesy in his assumption of command, ever mindful of her precedence, and she had no intention of tramping all over his authority in repayment. Besides, he was no less attentive than she. 'You got my six, _Kusa_?' he asked, with a fond cant to his voice warmly suggestive of the rhetorical; they both knew the answer to that as well.

'Any time, anywhere, Raven,' Kari gave back, the levity of her own inflection belying the quiet ferocity beneath; she meant every syllable. What bonds it didn't break a battle shared would forge all the stronger, fusing theretofore independent elements into one, infrangible whole, and the first wave had achieved much the same end. Throughout, 'Iscariot' had - somehow - kept as watchful an eye on his escorts as they had on him, and three times had thrown himself without hesitation between 'Swath' and an attacker that thought to take him unaware, for all the world as though slug and warhead _wouldn't_ core his AC every last bit as cleanly as it would the younger man's Muscle Tracer. Though Kari's heart had scarcely had time to polevault into her throat before Jake's would-be assailants adorned the battlescape as decorative wreckage, the Raven had earned more of her gratitude in each five- or six-second span than if he had saved her own life ten times over. The first or second she might have written off as coincidence, a professional acting on instinct and training before conscious thought could interject, but someone had once said that thrice had the makings of a pattern - and no one her side of sane would toss themselves repeatedly or so cavalierly into harm's way for just anyone; as far as Kari was concerned, 'Iscariot' was as much a member of _Tela_ as Maggie or Wil, now, whatever the service rosters might say.

She and _Kusa_ fell back further to give one another room to maneuver, spreading out behind _Knell_ like the red-drab hem of a cloak hundreds of meters wide; the Armored Core stood stock-still, at once fathomless calm itself and yet poised on the edge of sudden violence.

' _"...neither the rush of Sumaran horse nor the press of foot..."_,' the Raven murmured, so softly that Kari couldn't have made it out had she not committed the story to memory more or less verbatim. _And neither the rush of Sumaran horse nor the press of foot could prevail against her, breaking, all, upon her resolve._

Very apropos. She regarded _Knell_ contemplatively from the green depths of the forest, right index finger tapping idly against the side of the control yoke, then shook her head with a sound that was awed, amused, and non-plussed in equal proportion as memories just tens of minutes old replayed across her mental vision. _Knell_, parting the ghost ranks like they were water, blade flitting like a swallow through motions that had married devastating utility to elegant simplicity; the _Geist_ advance, shivering like a spear hurled dead into a granite wall, _Bär_ and biped alike slowly whittled away like deadwood.

_Yes_, she thought , nodding almost imperceptibly to herself.

V_ery apropos indeed._

**E****DZARD**** B****AHR**

Clocking a crisp nine hundred kilometers per hour at ten thousand meters, and pulling along the other eleven fighters of MVFA-6 behind him in an open, diamond-shaped formation, Lieutenant Colonel Edzard Bahr fought the urge to put his fist through one of the cockpit MFR's. Not ten minutes out of FAS Gal, the squadron had only just clawed its way up to its optimum cruising altitude, and at best speed was still twenty minutes out at least from 413 Forward - more probably twenty-three or -four, depending upon the temperament of the winds along their flight path, which would just about square with the way the rest of the day had gone.

One of three forward air stations on the 'Line, Gal had been sited to provide air cover and support for the most critical positions strung along the four hundred kilometer extent of the Northern Sector, as had been Avalon and Colnart Bay for the Central and Southern. As the only military power with the resources to field a full-strength wing by way of an air force - their long-time rival Crest boasted a pittance of two squadrons, and even the mighty EGDF no more than three - Bahr's own Mirage Armed Services had committed no less than half of its fighter corps to the 'Line, dispatching one squadron of attack fighters to each forward air station; it was only between the three of them that KiSec, Crest, and the Defense Force had matched MARSer's contribution, managing a single squadron apiece to accompany one or another of its sister units from Mirage.

But with twenty-four aircraft at their disposal, thence, each staging facility kept one squadron on alert around the clock, ready to go wheels-up within five minutes of the order to launch, and able to reach any point in their area of responsibility inside of another ten at full burn.

Bahr let out a low, disgusted growl.

Oh, it worked out beautifully, in theory - and fell just as miserably flat on its face, in praxis. Whatever _Geist_-humping REMF had dreamed up the arrangement had evidently forgotten or pointedly ignored the fact that they had yet to see a single _Geist_ fighter take wing, in consequence of which every interceptor squadron had spent the war cooling its heels back in the Interior - where, incidentally, they could maintain watch over their respective homefronts lest a restive neighbor think to turn the war to quick advantage. The only craft of any real use on the frontlines were either dedicated attack fighters or such air superiority models as could be modified, tweaked, or cajoled into a passable imitation of a fighter-bomber - neither of which had anything like the horsepower that the FAS network's architect had obviously had in mind when they drew up their plans. At best, the two squadrons of improvised strike fighters could push top speeds in the vicinity of Mach 1.5 with a meaningful payload - and that of a size, shape, and weight that they'd never been intended to accommodate, although they performed better than anyone could have reasonably expected of them so far outside their design envelope - with the ground attack frames that filled out the remaining two thirds of the frontier forces' air power scraping together maybe half that. In a dive, like as not.

A small chronometric display, inset unobtrusively in the lower right corner of the forward instrument bank, grudgingly admitted at last that a full minute had gone by since last he had looked, as though time's passage had to drag every second out of it kicking and screaming; Bahr shot the offending readout an auger glare that by rights should have bored through it into the radar array behind, and for a moment he wondered how much he really needed the thing. His fist twitched dangerously around the control stick.

The Chancewelle Aviot cF.09 _Talisman_ that he, his 'Ground Pounders', and the other MARSAF squadrons on the 'Line flew was far and away the hardiest of the Aught Series fighters, in essence little beyond armored fuselage molded with austere elegance to a pair of twenty-seven millimeter 'Harbinger' cannons, with heavy engines to keep the entire affair plodding through the skies - but 'plod' was more or less at the upper limit of the get-up-and-go that the Aught-Nine could muster. By the specs its absolute, red-line, bat-out-of-hell flank speed missed a thousand kilometers per hour by just a shade, but fuel efficiency would have plummeted through the bottom and fallen _off _of the proverbial charts long before it reached nine fifty, restricting it to a more realistic cruise velocity of nine hundred or so if its pilot wanted to do more than glimpse the area of operations before they hit bingo fuel and had to turn back. Huffton Electric had tailor-built the _Talisman's_ dinosauric turbofans for its close air support mission profile, implementing a dual-phase 'transmission', of sorts, that optimized powerplant output and fuel consumption at both the very high and very low ends of its performance profile - but subsonic was subsonic, and with some three _hundred_ kilometers between FAS Gal and 413 Forward, covering no more than fifteen every minute felt like an arthritic shuffle.

And it had been _Bahr's_ squadron on the alert rosters when the call came in, naturally, not Lieutenant Colonel Martin and his Jacks - because Murphy always got his way, somehow or other. The cF.07 _Streale_ that Ben Martin's 'Jacks of All Trades' ran was the finest air superiority fighter flying, debatably the crown jewel in the abbreviated line of fixed-wing aircraft put out by Lenna-Treseau Aeronaute, and if it struggled with very much more than a third of the air-to-ground loadout that the _Talisman_ could heft, then it could put its ordnance on target and be halfway home by the time its slower cousin finally lumbered into the designated engagement zone.

But the _Streale's_ speed counted for the better part of nothing with its engines and avionics in various states of disassembly, pulled apart for spot maintenance on the off half of a duty rotation, and with nothing faster than a squadron of attack fighters - _attack_ fighters! - to mind the Northern Sector in the meanwhile. As long as it would take the Ground Pounders to reach 413, it might as well have been on the far side of ghost country - because some bit counter hadn't pulled their head out, good people were going to die.

Bahr hadn't the foggiest idea what the hell a 'flue' was, but as per the old expression he knew that he would have 'gone right up' the same had there been one handy - as it was, he piledrove an angry fist into his leg hard enough to splinter the thigh clipboard velcroed to his flight suit, too frustrated to so much as grunt for an impact that would surely leave a sizable bruise.

Not that he'd been quick or eager, warming to his new 'comrades'. A smoldering hatred for Crest Heavy Industries generally and ChiFor specifically was, after two centuries of often bitter enmity, as much a part of the Armed Services ethos as the certainty of their own technological, cultural, and moral ascendancy, and would hardly be laid aside in the space of an afternoon. Bahr's immediate and visceral loathing for Martin had been returned with interest, and once it was clear that MARSAF Command had rebuffed his every appeal to have Crest's squadron of interlopers and misfits transferred elsewhere - to the farthest nook of the Southern Sector, preferably, and the deepest, darkest cranny of _Geistland_ ideally - he'd set about making the other lieutenant colonel's life as miserable as humanly possible. But intransigent, _Geist_-kissing _bastards_ that the 'Kiffs' were, Martin had retaliated in kind rather than put in the simple request for reassignment that would have made both their jobs an order of magnitude easier. Surreptitious sniping at one another's authority had soon given way to relentless training cycles meant to edge out and humble each other's commands, which had evolved thence into viscious rounds of squadron-on-squadron sim runs that would only end, more often than not, when one or another of their executive officers - who _would_ have taken to one another like long-lost sisters, of course - told them in no uncertain terms that their pilots were exhausted, and that they _would_ put a stop to their bullshit squabbling right that instant, superior rank be damned. After one especially grueling day of dawn-to-dusk simulations Major Caldwell had pulled him aside - yanked, really - and told him point-blank that she could and would personally 'kick his ass up and down the fucking hangar' until he stopped 'acting like a spoiled, 'risty brat' and 'grew the fuck up,' which ultimatum had left him little choice but to salvage what he could of his dignity and announce that he had 'decided' to call it a day; two-thirds his size or no, Anna's 'threat' was neither idle nor even threat at all, but a deadly serious promise that he knew for a fact she 'could and would' indeed keep. To the letter.

But neither he nor Martin was the sort to budge a centimeter when they were in the right - or when they _thought_ that they were, in Martin's case - and in the end the only way to resolve their rivalry had been to let it run its course.

He still wasn't entirely sure which of them had thrown the first punch, as they'd both moved within milliseconds of one another, but his quarters would surely never be the same again. Where Bahr was compact and wiry, and had relied on a flurry of jabs to saturate the other man's defenses, Martin was the size of a bear with arms to match, and had a left hook that rang Bahr's head like a bell; neither able to lay hold of definitive advantage with their individual repetoires of blows and counterblows, they had been on the verge of reaching for whatever sticks of furniture were nearest to hand, or any objects even remotely jectible, when they caught their reflection in a washstand mirror that their scuffle had knocked crazily askew. The sight of themselves rolling around like schoolyard boys in the dirt stopped them dead for several long seconds, whereupon Martin suddenly burst into a fit of roaring laughter that caught up Bahr moments later, with both of them carrying on nearly to the point of tears. Edzard was sure it must have looked a scene from a sanitarium, two grown men cackling like hyenas beneath layers of blood and grime, sprawled on the floor in a disaster of a room wherein a three hundred kilogram bomb might have cooked off to less destructive effect - but in the final analysis, things couldn't have shaken out any better. Though only in the interest of pummeling one another senseless, in the beginning, the fact remained that they _had_ finally met in the middle of the no-man's land between them, and remained long enough for the red fog of their mutual acrimony to lift. To Bahr's great and thundering shock, he had discovered that he actually quite liked Martin, behind and below the patina of intercorporate faction that had so sharply defined his professional life, which revelation had been mirrored with scarcely less surprise in the other man's features. That they'd spent months on end doggedly latched to one another's throats mattered not an iota, and from that moment on they'd been the fastest possible friends, exchanging animosity for camaraderie in the spaces between eyeblinks.

Anna, impressed by little and fazed by less, had nearly dropped her teeth when they strolled into the wardroom the following morning, mottled purple from sole to crown and joking and laughing together like boyhood pals to boot - Bahr would have given half a year's pay to frame the look on her face and accounted it a bargain - and their pilots' unanimous reply to the incomprehensible volte-face had been open, wordless bewilderment. But where their CO's had led they dutifully followed, if puzzledly, and it was the work of barely a week to set the wheels turning in the direction of genuine integration. By virtue of the punishing training regimen to which Bahr and his opposite number had subjected their squadrons, the Gropos and the Jacks knew one another's stick personalities like their own reflections, and from the frenzied drive to outperform, it had been a short leap to learning instead how to compliment, each other. The Ground Pounders' close air support role bled easily into the suppression of enemy air defenses, while the maintenance of aerial supremacy to which the Jacks of All Trades were so well suited translated without loss into the safeguard of their sister squadron, and any remaining rivalry took on a purely amicable character; by the time that Gus launched his general assault on the 'Line the ChiFor and MARSAF pilots of FAS Gal were a single squadron in all but name, their ability to operate in concert raised to the very acme of lethal efficacy. Scrambled together in defense of 413 Forward, the Ground Pounders had pounced on mobile anti-air with feral dispatch as the Jacks aligned on their bombing runs and gutted any ghost formations of opportunity, both sowing far greater desolation in tandem than either could have alone; to date they retained hold of a flawless operational record, untouched by the losses that had befallen so many units elsewhere on the frontier, and such good fortune Bahr ascribed in no small part to the confraternity that wreathed its way through the Gal ranks.

No, he'd not warmed either quickly or eagerly to the Crest pilots foisted upon him- but if he knew that he'd always had a quick temper, then he was also man enough to admit when he'd been wrong. However checkered the history between their parent companies, however thick or caustic the bad blood, if Ben Martin was the measure of a ChiFor officer then he would be proud - _proud_ - to fly on a Kiff's wing any day.

Forcing his fist open with some effort, Bahr brushed loose shards and flecks of plastic from the leg of his flight suit, and let the last of his ire drain away with a long, heavy breath. From his reconciliation to the ChiFor pilots at Gal it had been just a hop, skip, and insensible jump to the recognition of the frontier forces generally as his brothers and sisters in arms, some of whom very likely _would_ die today because of the attenuation of the fighter umbrella over NorthSEC...but in all painful reality, he knew, there was precious little that might be done to improve it.

When Unin had brought the walls of Layered society crashing down and all but forced humanity back to the Surface, the military application of air power had been an idea so long in abeyance that it was scarcely differentiable from chariot warfare or the hoplite phalanx. Though enormous beyond compare, in relative terms, the geofront wherein mankind had waited out the shrieking, radioactive tempest that he'd loosed on the world neither necessitated nor truly permitted of travel by air - more a vast network of oversized tunnels than anything else, for the sake of structural integrity Layered boasted few spaces to which the descriptor 'open' might justly be applied, and of which even the largest might be traversed at a brisk walk in the lesser part of an hour.

And on the Surface itself the use of aircraft had taken hold but slowly, the bulk of early reclamation carried out by means of nothing more exotic than land transport and the occasional Raven-led scouting party. While an obvious solution in retrospect, it had been some five years before the first fixed and rotary-wing craft took the skies once more, and then in nothing like the numbers that had once crowded the airways, if some of the more outlandish pre-Destruction tales were to be believed.

For, of the tiny fistful of truly legitimate military powers, only Mirage had then possessed the disposable resources to invest in so whimsical an enterprise: Crest, cautious and conservative to a fault, had been reluctant to leave the nest at all, and in consequence of an over-reliance on the preëxisting infrastructure of Layered had pursued an altogether balky and halting program of redevelopment; and the Earth Government, though one could never imagine it so to see it now, had been a joke as funny as it was pitiable until the outbreak of the war - Bahr couldn't help a smirk - and as late as the twelfth anniversary of E-Day the Defense Force had only managed to field a single, under-strength squadron. Kisaragi, historically the smallest of the major corporations and beset as a matter of course by enemies at all points of the compass, had likewise begun with just one squadron, and most probably would never expand their air forces further - although they, at least, most probably would never _need_ to. The smirk fell off of Bahr's face as abruptly as it had lighted.

Small outfit or no, the 'Partisans' were seriously scary motherfuckers. Setting any O-Club boasting aside, Edzard knew that his pilots were nothing short of damn good, ranking among the best flying with MARSAF or on the 'Line generally, and since partnering with the Jacks they'd done nothing but improve, attaining to what he would have imagined to be the definitive apex of the fighter pilot's craft - until Miranda Breighe had proven him deeply, humbly wrong. During the annual round of INTERCOR joint training exercises in July the Gropos had been assigned to the aggressor force, opposite Breighe's Partisans flying in simulated defense of the objective...and were subequently blotted from the sky to the last set of wings. Three sorties a day across the week-long training op tallied up to twenty-one crushing defeats - the _best_ of which ended with two Partisans 'downed' before the Ground Pounders were taken out of the fight entirely - gaining MVFA-6 admittance to perhaps the least exclusive club among the corporate air forces: year after year KiSec's pilots trounced any and all comers, racking up hundreds of mock-kills as they chewed their way squadron by squadron through the rest of their colleagues. In the later comparison of notes on their respective encounters with the Partisans, Bahr and Martin had determined over sympathetic drinks that INTERCOR served as nothing if not one hell of a deterent, providing a string of reminders - as if any such were required - that any force mad enough to assay the invasion of Caralaine would fast be up to its hips in its own blood; the day _that_ damned fool order came down the line, they agreed, was the day they resigned their commissions and retired to the private sector.

But if the Partisans were worth any two squadrons to be found elsewhere, and that with no little room to spare, then they were still limited by the ever-intractable laws of nature to the occupation and defense of just one place at any given time, and therein lay the FAS system's potentially fatal flaw: between the four largest military organizations on the Blue Side of the 'Line there were only a dozen fighter squadrons in all, fully half of which were unsuitable for service at the front. Sleek, masterfully crafted, and capable of moving at just shy of two-and-a-half times the speed of sound at altitude, Lenna-Treseau's cF.03 _Tempest_ had been embraced early and with enthusiasm by both MARSAF and ChiFor appropriations boards as a made-to-order, quick-response solution to the storm of aerial hit-and-run operations that each had unleashed on the other; scrabbling at the bottom of the state coffers, the Defense Force had somehow magicked up enough funding to keep its own hat in the ring, putting in an order a few years later for - incredibly - twice the numbers that ChiFor had requisitioned. But with, as LTA engineers boasted, 'not a gram for AGM', the Aught-Three reigned supreme over the slim and solitary province of aerial interception, an apex predator at the top of a narrow ecosystem populated exclusively by corporate and government forces - against a foe that had thus far demonstrated nothing but uniform disinterest in conventional air power, it was near to useless.

With the one, two, and three _Tempest_ squadrons respectievely of ChiFor, the EGDF, and MARSAF maintaining Blue-side vigil around their Interior centers of power, thence, the other half-dozen of _Streales_ and _Talismans_ on the 'Line were, quite simply, all that the frontier forces had - period. Between those seventy-two men and women alone, no more than two-thirds of whom were realistically available at any one time, had been parcelled out over twelve _hundred_ kilometers of contested airspace, and it was Bahr's fervent prayer that Gus never stumbled to just how insubstantial the airborne picket was - in the skies over the front the 'thin red line' was a tenuous affair indeed.

But at the end of the day all that he, his pilots, and the 'Line commanders could do was make the best of a situation that was bad going on deplorable. For, even if tomorrow the MARSer director fell ass-backwards into a cache of dozens or hundreds of spare fighters lying around in a forgotten hangar somewhere; even if defense spending weren't edging corporate and government budgets as close to the red as any of them dared; even if the Silent Line were a continuous, triple-layered lanicrete rampart thirty meters tall and running from northern coast to southern, the grim truth of the war was that they were at their numerical limits, if not beyond - and not just the frontier forces, but humanity itself. Bahr had never known quite what to make of the wild-eyed fairytales that historians spun about the pre-Destruction population, but whatever the grain of truth that may or may not have lain beneath them - millions he could just about buy, but _b_illions..? - it was obvious enough that man was far less prolific than he had been. Absent the maintenance of the precise equilibrium that life in Layered had demanded, birth rates had begun to creep toward something like genuine growth since E-Day, but it would be generations and more before the species hit anything near even the higher sextuple digits - and as it stood, a measurable, _integer_ percentage of the populace was already on the front, with little prospect of meaningful reinforcement in the foreseeable future. Bahr had always been quick to deride the - idiotic, as he had then thought it - policy of clinging to the 'Line like frightened children to a parent's leg, maintaining with no little adamancy that only _pro_action, rather than the timid brand of _re_action that had prevailed to that point, would see the _Geisteskrieg_ ended in something more than calamity...but once framed in lanicrete numerical terms, the counterargument had snapped into sudden, alarming focus. He knew for a fact that Colonel Opnoff was no coward - in point of fact he'd once had to throttle sense back into a Kiff pilot who'd been tipsy or foolish enough to suggest otherwise within earshot - and he'd never been able to square the man's early-war exploits with the seemingly timorous disposition of the frontier forces until he realized with just how appallingly little he was trying to keep the entire enterprise from coming apart at the seams; the Colonel had worked himself half to death just to hold the 'Line, and if he was terrified of taking on the offensive the fragile coalition that he'd painstakingly assembled over the past two years, then in no small part it was surely because it comprised the fullest extent of his available resources: there _were_ no more Blue-side reserves.

Which wasn't to say that they _wouldn't_ have to start pushing back - and hard - sooner rather than later, but for all his frustration Bahr would concede that the often sorry state of affairs on the front stemmed more typically than not from circumstances for which there were no practicable remedies; unless the Colonel knew the magic words that would accelerate the human reproductive process and growth rate, happened to know the location of a second Layered, or could pull an army out of a hat, there was little to be done save play as wily a hand as he could.

More to the point, between Bahr and the host of concerns appurtenant to the top-level direction of the war lay the rather more immediate problem of the _Geist_ drive on 413. 'You can only climb one mountain at a time,' his father had always told him whenever he tried to take on too much at once, and if from time to time he still tended to overreach himself then he did his best to remember the point of well-grounded advice. That the subsonic Aught-Nine _Talismans_ his Gropos flew were all FAS Gal had on call today; that the MARSAF appropriations board had eschewed Lenna-Treseau's faster yF.08 fighter-bomber prototype for reasons unknown; that the forward air station itself had been established so _fucking_ far from the sector command hub - those, he could do little to rectify. All he could do was hope and pray that Tiering's forces held out until he got there - he shot the chronometer another warning glare - and then give the _Geister_ a thrashing they wouldn't soon forget once he did.

His head swiveled, taking in the rigid constellation of formation lights spreading around and behind him, and off his right wing Anna's visor found his; she flashed him a confident thumb's up. Yes, there was a chance that good people would die today - but not, Bahr decided as he nodded acknowledgement, if he had anything to say about it.

**R****IN**** U****NIN**

_Goddamnit._

_Elysium's_ rightward sidestep pulled Rin along behind by the flight harness, straps digging into the flesh around his shoulders and sides, then about-faced into a snappy jink leftward that moved the Armored Core out of one MT's line of fire and back into blade range of the first, yanking her pilot after her; a sweeping, moonrise slash, burning a sullen red line from one reverse-jointed knee to a point more or less where the opposite shoulder would have been on a more humanoid chassis, translated through the shock couch as a dull jolt, not terribly unlike a full-body kick felt through a few tens of layers of clothing.

Not that the movement bothered Rin. Having lived more of his life as a Raven than not, and spent almost as much of that life in the cockpit as out, the jounce and jostle of an AC in motion felt at least as natural as their want - indeed, whether walking, running, skimming, or bounding through booster-assisted leaps, the attendant delta-v was, far from a source of discomfort, simply part and parcel of the proper order of the world.

Nor did the battle swirling around him trouble Rin overmuch, despite the inordinately - or so he was given to understand, from snippets of comm chatter caught here and there - stiff resistance that the _Geister_ had mounted; if anything, he _welcomed_ the contest. Too many years of his life had been invested with far too little return in the effectively zero-sum venture of elusion, and to fight _for_ something again, to put his life on the line for something larger than himself, something that actually meant a damn, felt so wonderfully, indescribably..._right_. The _Geister_ were welcome to essay their worst, as far as he was concerned - however unlikely their chosen cause, in its defense he and _Elysium_ would cut their way through the benighted legions of hell itself, if need be.

But it wasn't the irony of the crusade he'd taken up that vexed either - at least not too much, not right then - although of all the jokes that life, the universe, the dead god of Abraham and Isaac, or any other malign entity might have played on him, that he should espouse the very cause championed by the Earth Government surely ranked among the cruelest. But if the enemy of his enemy was still his mortal nemesis, then Opnoff, the Defense Force, and EarthGov generally were also the single and last collective rock on which humanity might build its recovery and reflorescence; Rin had sacrificed everything that he could rightfully call his own to prise man's future from the Controller's mad, tyrannical death grip, and if it were his final act on or under this Earth then he _would_ see it safeguarded - if he had to bed the gods-bedamned Earth Government to see it so, then so be it.

A tight octuplet of plasma bolts suddenly bracketed _Elysium_ with sultry, ruby light, 'Harley' and 'Swath' chipping away, from her four and eight o'clock, at the edges of the breach that she had forced in the ghost lines; five struck true, slagging 'Swath's target and crippling an ankle joint on 'Harley's.

'Nineteen,' Jake ticked off his latest kill, continuing, in a deadpan tone so studiously bland that it bordered on the ostentatious, the count he'd taken up since the second wave had hit a few minutes earlier, and earning an exasperated grunt from his older wingmate.

'Alright already, alright!' Wil burst out, admitting defeat in the mostly jocular argument that he'd mistakenly struck up some minutes prior, and which had occasioned the running tally; if his voice were any indication, Rin guessed that his hands would have been thrown into the air had they not been wrapped around the control yoke. 'I admit it already, okay? You're the better shot!' By the Raven's count he was in fact a good half-dozen MT's delinquent, and falling farther behind by the minute.

'I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you over the sound of all the kills I'm racking up.' Wil's only reply came out a strangled, almost girlish squawk that carried with it the distinct impression of a mouth hanging open; from her station several hundred meters south, 'Impulse' snickered.

'Not bad for someone who's "too young to even reach the pedals," huh?' she observed with wicked delight.

'That wasn't-'

'Twenty.'

'Just ask "Izzy", I was only-'

'Twenty-one.'

'Son of a-! Aah!' From wit's end Wil blew a frustrated breath across the line. 'I give up,' he grumbled - 'you people don't fight fair.' Maggie laughed evilly.

'Funny,' Kari broke in drily, 'I could've sworn that I'd brought a team of KiSec pilots out here with me, not a bunch of chattering schoolgirls.' All sounds of merriment cut off abruptly, silence heavy with chagrin descending across the channel. 'Unless someone changed the duty rosters while I wasn't looking..?' Appropriately apologetic noises shuffled over the comm in the direction of her MT, signalling an implicit negative; she let the moment drag out for a long second, the hiss and pop of dead air lending her point an altogether eloquent _gravitas_, before continuing. 'And, "Harley"? I expect _all_ my pilots to give better than they get - _especially_ when they're outnumbered; the only "fair" fight is the one you win.' Rin didn't know her well enough to say for certain, but for reasons that he couldn't rightly explain he strongly suspected she was wearing a cheshire grin on top of that oh-so-neutral tone.

'Oh, man...' Wil groaned, to the accompaniment of an irregular, gasping squeak that could only have been Maggie trying for all she was worth to hold back a guffaw; Jake's own attempt doubled as an eerily convincing impression of a man being hanged.

Rin stiffled a laugh, which mirth deferred thence gave way, with nearly bipolar instantaneity, to a scowl that was equal parts anger and frustration; he laid into the ghost forces milling around him with unwonted ferocity, _Elysium's_ movements waxing shorter and sharper as thoughts boiled over uneasily at the back of her pilot's mind.

For, the source of his consternation was, at its core, his new-found comrades-in-arms.

Their skill and professionalism, of course, were above reproach - if they evinced a marked predilection for non-essential comm traffic, then it was because they, a good deal better than most, knew what they were about in the field, and bore the extraneous demand on their attention without perceptible loss of tactical efficiency. In the clockwork precision with which they flew he was all but certain he could descry their present commander's capable hand, in which case she had trained them to a standard of excellence uncommon even among the miscellaneous special operations outfits that MARSer and ChiFor maintained. By curious chance Rin had never before had occasion to cross paths with Kisaragi's Security Forces, knowing them only by reputation before he secured his contract on the 'Line, but if Kari and her team were a reliable barometer then it was well deserved.

And the dispatch with which they carried out his orders, never once standing on the misguided pride that so often proved the downfall of such heterogeneous forces, likewise marked them out as worthy exemplars of the soldier's craft. While Rin imagined that most such hang-ups had - _must_ have - been ironed out early on among the frontier forces, time and again throughout the long course of his career in Layered he'd seen the friction born of inter-corporate rivalry hamper attempts at truly joint operations, whether in the reluctance of Crest rank and file to follow the lead of an Oasis officer, or in the refusal of Mirage enlistedmen and -women to obey a Crest officer without first receiving confirmation from their own, or, in one extreme instance, in the near-lynching of a Mirage commander by a suicidally stupid Oasis detachment, evidently unconcerned by the air-tight pretext for brutal and crushing annexation that any such act would afford the far larger company. That the pilots of _Kusa_ had risen so completely above such petty intercourse bespoke a salutary discipline all too rare amidst the jealous and factious currents that eddied about the modern armed forces, and did both their commanding officer and their branch of service no little credit.

And they were as affable a lot as any he'd met, what was more. The hauteur that clung like an insufferable second shadow to most elite units was nowhere in evidence among the _Kusa_ ranks, the pilots of which seemingly contented themselves with the quiet knowledge that their skills were worth more than all the empty showmanship and bluster that their so-called 'peers' could trot out. That wasn't to say that their ChiFor and MARSer counterparts were without their merits, of course, but if - or, more probably, when: man had ever been most adept at fighting his fellow creatures - the internecine balloon ever went up again, Rin would put his money on _Kusa_ any day of any week. But with all the formidable talent at their command they paired a demeanor that, if well short of humility, yet remained free of pretense, and the balance that they so negotiated between KiSec's potent _esprit de corps_ and a natural, open amity had only endeared them to the Raven further.

And therein lay the problem in its entirety: he was starting to _like_ them.

Rin glowered stormily, less for the cloud of _Geist_ tracers stipling the HFD with points of magnesium fire than for the burgeoning realization, and swore again with feeling.

_God_damn_it._

He knew on intimate terms the hazards intrinsic to interpersonal entanglement, and for a decade-and-a-half had, without compromise, held safely beyond arm's length any prospective attachment: _Elysium_ aside, with a permanently standing order for his apprehension 'by any and all means' - and fortune enough for ten men as added incentive - he could ill afford emotional investment in anyone or -thing on which he wasn't willing to walk out in thirty seconds or less.

_And yet..._

The precursors to a disgusted growl rumbled in the lower reaches of his throat.

And yet, despite the illogic that ran brazenly rampant about the very notion, and the disaster waiting with malevolent eventuality in the wings, he couldn't help but take to Kari and her team. _Her damnably_ personable _team..._ Nor did they make the maintenance of a safe distance any easier by accepting him so readily, including him in their verbal horseplay as though he'd been on the _Kusa_ muster-rolls alongside them for years, rather than plummetting from the heavens to assume impromptu command of a unit with which, until that afternoon, he'd been wholly unacquainted; one might just as easily have guessed him an elder brother as a last-minute addition to the 413 stable, by the familiarity of their commerce.

Nor was the certain knowledge that even as they welcomed 'Tom Paine' they reviled Rin Unin, Tyrannicide and Archtraitor to rival Brutus and Cassius themselves, any useful help, for he found it increasingly difficult to hold it against a group that, if nothing else, would likely have been too young on E-Day to know any better anyway. _Oh, making excuses for them now, are you?_ a cynical voice jeered. _Fully a third of the people alive today were no more than children back then - that never stopped you from taking _them_ to task for their failure to read between the historical lines, and recognize how pernicious the Controller's influence was. Going soft in your old age, are you?_

Muscles along Rin's jaw twitched indignantly. The voice was wrong, of course...but however erroneous its overarching implication, that he couldn't dispute any particular point - save for the last: the small mountain range of Muscle Tracer corpses rising around him well proved just how _soft_ he'd become - only stoked higher a temper that already smoldered in perpetuity.

So very well, he decided impatiently - if he'd been caught out in the inconsistent, twilight realm between reason and instinct, then so be it. To negotiate the trackless marches between them, to hang medulla in counterweight to cerebral cortex - _that_ was what it meant to be human, as much as anything else. That he could offer up no rational justification for the latitude he'd unconsciously extended to Kari and the others rendered it no less valid, for over the cognitive terrain whereon logic mired hopelessly his 'sixth' sense roved effortlessly - and the way it was, it told him, was just the way it was, even if the left side of his brain wanted to pound itself stupid against the forward instrument bank for the dissonance of it all; the groan that slipped out instead spared the narrow tract of expensive real estate that lay between control stick and heads-forward display, although it was evidently loud enough that Rin's helmet mic picked it up for transmission over _Kusa's_ tac channel.

'Hey, don't feel bad, "Izzy",' Wil piped up, with words of faux encouragement according to his own fancied interpretation of the Raven's exclamation of dismay - 'keep it up and one day, why, you'll be as good as me.'

Maggie's incredulous snort made clear _her_ opinion on the other pilot's topsy-turvy self-assessment, and even as Rin let out a laugh for 'Harley's incorrigible sense of humor he swore again, this time in resignation.

_Goddamnit..._

**K****ARI**** T****RAVESS**

'Hey, don't feel bad, "Izzy" - keep it up and one day, why, you'll be as good as me.'

Kari made a sitting lunge for the comm panel, killing the audio pick-up on her end in case she lost hold of the laugh that she'd only just choked off. _Damn you, Wil!_

She should have reprimanded him for the breach of protocol then and there - particularly coming, as it did, so close on the heels of her earlier admonition - but in neither her time as _Tela's_ executive, nor her thus-far brief tenure as its commanding, officer had she yet puzzled out a means of chastising the team joker with any semblance of moral authority while simultaneously chuckling at his antics.

And by the indulgent lights of the Security Forces, which had never framed commissioned-enlisted familiarity and devastating combat efficiency in the same contrived terms of mutual exclusivity, his penchant for the comedic was a rather more venial transgression than their more stringent counterparts reckoned such infractions, as well as his only real vice - and that one from which his performance remained securely insulated. For all his dramatic affectation in the 'contest' that he'd so far lost to Jake's superior marksmanship, and as hard and close as he sometimes rode the line of propriety, Wil was still an outstanding pilot - she'd trained him to be nothing less. The _picosecond_ that any of her people picked up a genuinely bad habit she would put a stop to it with end-_Permian_ finality, but as matters stood she would confidently pit Wil - smart mouth and all - against any _two_ Kiffs or Marsies with every expectation of a favorable outcome.

No, at the moment their most serious problem in fact lay on the enemy's side of the field, for it had become increasingly apparent that, as vigorous a defense as 413 had raised, it just wasn't en-

Pilot's instincts screeched in sudden warning as motion in the ghost lines ahead shifted subtly, sympathetic movements building into a broad, alarmingly uniform pattern that rolled through the opposing formation as torsos and coaxial weapon muzzles began tracking toward the same target.

The same _red-drab_ target.

Without thought Kari ruddered hard to her left, her assiduously conditioned muscles reacting to the transconscious stimulus very nearly on an autonomic level; vernier packages on her Muscle Tracer's flank shoved pilot and machine hard onto a tangent vector, a small river of machine gun fire pouring into the space between her and Maggie to churn the sere earth into warm powder. Kari's return fire caught at least two of the guilty parties dead in their centers of mass as it played across the ranks and files of _Geist_ MT's, panning through a shallow arc as she followed her initial jink into a generous, elliptical course that dropped her out on her wingmate's four o'clock; smoothly taking the lead, Maggie initiated a short strafing run on a roughly southward heading before the pair separated again, presenting Gus with as erratic a sight picture as possible to keep his targeting software guessing.

But it wasn't enough.

From a dispassionate back corner of her mind Kari ran gloomy analysis after gloomy analysis of the battle as she flew, each time in vain search of the victory which, her experience told her, passed further afield of the realm of possibility with every minute. 'Iscariot' and _Kusa_ had meshed better than she would have dared to hope, their collective performance far surpassing the most optimistic of the predictions that she might have formulated for a composite unit theretofore untested and unblooded, but if they had so far held their part of the line rock-steady, then she saw no way that they could do so indefinitely - indeed, had anyone else been posted to the southern flank, she felt sure that it would have been turned long since. For his part, 'Iscariot' was... Kari shook her head in lingering disbelief. For his part, 'Iscariot' was a force of fucking _nature_, any way that she cut it - and in the finest tradition of the service, _Kusa_ had met and exceeded every demand made of it by an engagement that had waxed outrageously unbalanced even by KiSec standards, flying fit to match the best that the Captain had ever asked of them - truly, she had never been prouder.

_But how long can we keep this up?_ However many times their number of less capable pilots she, _Kusa_, and 'Iscariot' were worth, the fact remained that they were only five against the teeming masses of the second wave with which Gus had followed up his probing attack - how long before that ratio simply collapsed under its own weight? _How long before they're at the walls? How long before they're _on_ them? Over them?_

After a refractory period of some few minutes wherein its spent magazines were replenished, the Polaris battery had resumed its steady rate of fire, chipping away at the (Kari assumed) rear of the ghost lines while 413's defenders encountered its leading edges - but with the Ravens and _Tela's_ two remaining elements heavily engaged along both flanks, the considerably more efficacious alpha strike that the artillery captain had ordered earlier was no longer a viable option. Penned in between command hub and rocketfall as he was, by any conventional evaluation of his tactical disposition Gus _had_ been caught at a marked disadvantage nevertheless...but the simplest terms to which the battle had thence been reduced were defined by little so much as a grinding, attritive race to thin the opposition's ranks faster than they did one's own, with the _Geist_ numbers tantamount to a substantial head start. While the balance point, according to Kari's read on the posture of each belligerent, yet lurked on the temporal sidelines, the ineffable fulcrum on which balanced the outcome of their contest had narrowed to a critical, razor edge, to either side of which decisive advantage would irreparably tumble with the slightest upset.

Slaloming through a (hopefully) disorienting helical maneuver with Maggie, she stole a measuring glance at 413's walls, their lanicrete circuit visible in the wan moonlight as blocks of slightly darker shadow against the better-lit sky and landscape behind. In their southern AOR the battleline had stabilized at approximately two thousand meters out, just a few hundred beyond the perimeter that Kilo Company's first platoon maintained at the center; the roughly concave crescent technically favored the defenders, allowing them to more readily coördinate massed fire than the _Geister_ could with their own lines bowed toward their rear, but it had also fixed ghost positions at the extreme limits of the hub's DFP. For with the bulk of enemy strength committed along the central axis of their advance, and the _Sheridan_ crews strung, like ancient ships of the line, from north to south to counter it accordingly, the oblique and lateral edges of 413's 'kill zone' were delimited by the envelopes of the heavy weapons on the ramparts above, which reached out to a distance of two kilometers only with some difficulty. The man-portable Anti-Tank and Armor missile system, which lent the infantrymen and -women of Charlie and Zulu companies their greatest offensive potency against the exclusively - or so it had seemed to date - mechanized _Geisteswehr_, laid claim to a paper range of nineteen to twenty-one hundred meters depending upon prevailing winds and relative elevation, but Kari knew, from various conversations with KiSec grunts, that it operated at optimum efficiency at something closer to three quarters that span; the few ATA warheads loosed in support of ACT 'Iscariot' flew wide of their designated mark nearly as often as not, their compact fuel cells too meager to carry them so far _and_ accommodate the course corrections requisite to accurate flight out to so remote a target.

The simplest and most logical solution, of course, was obvious enough: pull back further beneath the ATA aegis, thereby drawing their ghost aggressors deeper into the direct-fire perimeter where they could more effectively pool their firepower with the heavy weapons crewers of Charlie and Zulu, and repair more fully their numerical disadvantage. But the rigors of KiSec basic flight training, as well as the harsher lessons of her experience both interior and anterior to the war, gave Kari pause as she surveyed the field with a professional eye, weighing options against their probable ramifications. Ceding ground to an enemy, she knew, was always a chancy enterprise regardless of intent, for therein lay the possibility that the retrograde movement would accelerate with a life of its own and impart to their antagonist's advance a momentum beyond the defenders' ability to check or control - indeed, in several of the most shattering victories to Kisaragi's name the on-site commander had made expert use of that very principle, seizing upon and appropriating an opportune shift in net battlefield inertia to rout a 'superior' force.

But on the other hand, war was a gamble, always, and irresolute wish-washing wouldn't change or improve the cards that they had to play. Risky or no, falling back to bring the ground pounders more completely into play held out their best prospect of evening up the odds - and if anyone could effect the maneuver successfully, herding the _Geister_ precisely where they needed them and keeping them there, Kari knew it would be the five of them.

'Iscariot', it seemed, was on precisely the same page, for a second or two ahead of her suggestion he had already raised the command hub. ' "Echo",' he sent without preamble, presumably addressing his Operator, 'recommend we pull back, draw in our lines where the heavy weapons companies can do some more good;' the channels - the Raven had evidently slaved tactical and mission frequency together for _Kusa's_ benefit - crackled softly to themselves as the Global Cortex liaison conferred with 413's Operations section, leaving the pilots to their own devices in the interim. Kari's peripheral attention flickered between radar inset, the view over her shoulders, and the HFD as her fingers tapped out a nasty imitation of Morse Code on the firing studs, cool green eyes sizing up the most utile avenues of withdrawal that she and Maggie might follow should Ops give 'Iscariot' the go-ahead; northward, she knew, Wil and Jake would likewise be calculating their best outs, as she and Quinn had trained them to do. _And the Raven..._ Elegant, patrician lips quirked toward an altogether plebian grin. _The Raven, I'm sure, can just _make_ one whenever he damn well pleases._ A less preoccupied segment of her speculative faculties amused itself with a quick and dirty calculation of just how much firepower it would actually take to keep 'Iscariot' anywhere that he didn't want to be, in the end settling succinctly, if somewhat imprecisely, on 'a lot'.

'Green light, Raven,' the female voice on the other end of the paired comm channels - 'Echo' - broke into her thoughts; 'start your pullback at your discretion.' The line was quiet for a beat, then: 'Sierra-Three had already been thinking in that direction, but you beat them to the punch - looks like you're ahead of the curve, "Iscariot".' Working apparently asynchronous duty shifts at one of the largest Defense Force strongholds on the 'Line, the two of them had never been acquainted as far as Kari could recall - 'Echo' didn't sound familiar, at any rate - but to her ear the other woman's neutral tones had warmed a few degrees with her supplementary comment. _Probably taking to her new client - hard not to, really._ It seemed that 'Iscariot' was the sort to make friends wherever he went.

'We do aim to please,' the Raven replied, matching to his Operator's inflection a curiously fond timbre of his own - or such was Kari's sense of the exchange, though she didn't pretend to any deep understanding of the mercenary-liaison relationship; she knew only that it was typified by a bond neither personal nor professional so much as a hybrid roughly equidistant between the two, with further, more subtle dimensions that undoubtedly remained dark to the average outsider. Exactly what services an Operator rendered that were so evidently indispensible, she'd never quite determined - KiSec Muscle Tracer Teams, no few of which operated models hardly differentiable by performance from their more glamorous AC cousins, got along just fine without the benefit of any operational support or oversight even remotely analogous thereto - but she was willing enough to give them the benefit of the doubt; that the practice had persisted among the sundry Raven's Nests in - as far as she was aware - unbroken tradition since the pre-Destruction era suggested that it had _some_ virtue or other to recommend it, however opaque, and she herself could give voluminous testimony to the passel of idiosyncrasies riddling most levels of her own Security Forces. _Besides, any system that produced 'Iscariot's got to be doing _something_ right._

'But copy on the O-K,' the Raven continued - 'Charlie and Zulu should expect us momentarily.' The other comm channel had scarcely closed - or separated - with a fuzzy click before 'Iscariot' had them on the move. ' "K-T", "Impulse", exit stage-right: we'll rally on fourth platoon's trailing edge, three hundred meter intervals as we go - three-aught-aught; "Swath", "Harley", and I will hold the door for you.'

_Exit stage-right..?_

'Ah, roger that, Raven - we're on our way out.'

_What the hell does _that_ mean?_

Weaving through an inter-arcing chain of half-ellipses, she and Maggie fell back behind a hard, ionized monsoon of fourth-state matter toward the imaginary north-south line that transected the fourth platoon's 'set-ward-most _Sheridan_, the field between them and the _Geister_ strobing a mad, ruby red with their cohorts' suppressing fire; three hundred meters on Kari cut the throttle and slewed hard around, taking up station, as per 'Iscariot's orders, where the two of them could lay down covering fire for the other three to leapfrog to the rear.

The eruption of plasma to his right and southward, like a million-degree, horizontal cloudburst, was undoubtedly signal enough for the Raven to initiate his own hop 'set-ward, but sound martial protocol - and common sense - dictated that Kari supply a rather more precise indicator.

'You're good to go, "Iscariot",' she told him, every third word marking a ghost MT crippled or slagged outright by her hand. From her experiences in the half-dozen INTERCOR deployments that she'd made with _Tela_, as well as in a hundred nameless border skirmishes between Kisaragi and just about every other major or middling power Blue-side, she had discovered that, with few exceptions, a disconcerting number of pilots outside the Security Forces tended to synonymize 'cover' with 'wildly indiscriminate' when setting down cover fire, liberally dousing the target, target area, loosely associated environs, and anything that happened to move nearby with whatever munitions could be dispensed in shortest order - but any similar inclination among KiSec enlistees and basic officer candidates was extirpated with a ruthless, Draconian efficiency that still, six years after the fact, elicited from Kari a heartfelt cringe. In the course of the protracted, legalized hazing that moonlighted as Basic Officer Training, the perils of shoddy marksmanship had 'helpfully' been 'illustrated' by a coterie of debilitating punishments and demerits that revolved with suspicious ubiquity around ten-mile 'motivational' runs, with flight school upholding the tradition at least as zealously, if not more so. Yet if she and her fellow pilots-aspirant, from the depths of the misery that defined its first few weeks, had sworn on whatever they held most dear that they'd sooner turn in their wings than submit a second time to the ordeals of Basic Flight, she couldn't deny that it had been productive of tangible and enduring results - though her accuracy inevitably fell rather short of the one hundred percent ideal, she _felt_, with a visceral, animal panic, every misplaced shot, and took earnest pains to correct the failing that she had been so inflexibly conditioned to abhor; that she _knew_ she had been conditioned thus did nothing to lessen the nigh on superstitious dread of her instructors' displeasure.

As she sighted on a _Bär_ that chanced to cross her targeting reticle, Kari found herself taken by a sudden flash of curiosity. What might a _Raven's_ training entail? she wondered. Come to think of it, she'd never heard tell of a merc academy or any analog thereto - did they even have a set regimen, or did they just...pick it up as they went, somehow? That they must have been taught by _someone_ was a given - however strongly one's innate talent might incline them toward one calling or another, there was nothing in the slow grind of Homo sapiens' evolutionary history to correspond even loosely to the operation of an enormously up-scaled copy of itself via glorified plastic sticks - but by whom? And what _did_ they have to do to earn the stylized obsidian wings that, more often than not, were the only uniform device they shared in common? They were a famously close-mouthed lot, parting with information almost as readily as they might volunteer to pull their own teeth - though whether infatuated with the mystique enshrouding their profession, or just given to bouts of ludicrous paranoia, Kari had never been sure - but maybe 'Iscariot' would be more readily disposed to talk shop; too many of the Ravens whom she'd met were overbearing caricatures, with all the depth of personality that her nightstand boasted, but beneath _Knell's_ titanium-ceramic armor plating _Tela's_ unofficial ninth member was, for a wonder, an actual human being.

'Roge-' Kari's sextet of plasma bolts - better overkill than under-, she'd learned the hard way - caught the apparently unsuspecting _Bär_ just off-center, a novaburst of hard energy and static washing out 'Iscariot's abortive transmission as the _Geist_ AC gave a spectacular rendition of stellar seppuku.

The Raven gave a short chuckle. 'Roger, "K-T",' he repeated his acknowledgement - 'and nice shot.'

'Technically, I think there were six of 'em, "Izzy",' Wil put in helpfully; Maggie's pained groan snuck over the channel before 'Iscariot' could respond, accompanied, Kari knew, by the distinctive manner in which she shook her head - always thrice exactly, she'd observed, and always to the right first - whenever she rolled her eyes at something that Wil did.

'Glad to know someone's keeping the minutes,' 'Iscariot' replied equably, undeterred by the other man's interjection - 'but you heard the lady: break on my mark, gentlemen...' He trailed off a moment as he analyzed _Geist_ movements, the ascending pitch of his voice a phonetic placemarker to maintain the thread of his thought while he no doubt evaluated angles and firing patterns, as Kari was, until he took it up again; one second ticked by in radio silence, then two, wherein she and Maggie intensified their own rates of fire to oblige the trio with as wide an opening as possible. '...mark.'

'Harley' and 'Swath' peeled off to _Knell's_ right and left as the Armored Core skimmed backwards, their formation opening like a time-lapsed video of a flower blooming; 'Iscariot' put in his two centicreds with a tetra-spread of missiles as he went, then began snapping off rifle shots with calm, metronomic precision, eliciting a raised eyebrow from Kari: it was the first time that day that she'd seen him use anything but the energy blade he seemed to know backwards and forwards, and she'd largely forgotten that the rest of his hardware was anything more than ornamental. But as she watched the four warheads arc free her attention settled back to the matching pair of launchers affixed to _Knell's_ titanium-ceramic shoulder blades, and it occurred to her that it was just as well the Raven could stretch his magazines so far. Although the potency with which modern military engineering had endowed explosive compounds translated, in concrete terms, to a marked reduction in the size of the ordnance that relied upon them - a Special Projects researcher whose dinner invitation she'd once made the mistake of accepting had told her that any given charge in service today, whether it belonged to a missile, HEAT round, or rifle grenade, was fifty-three percent smaller on average than its pre- or immediately post-Destruction equivalent, with a fifteen to thirty percent higher yield - propulsive systems remained a far more limiting factor, their development lagging behind by as much as two or three generations, in some cases: her conversance with CMT tech was mostly confined to what commonality it shared with the Muscle Tracer side of the family tree, and the absurdly, idiotically, _irrationally_ diverse catalogue of parts open to the Raven were enough to set the mind awhirl - in maddening consequence of which, incidentally, the accurate assessment of any hostile Armored Core's tactical capabilities lay on the far side of impossible until they actually opened fire - but to judge by the nearest approximation in the KiSec armories _Knell's_ vertical launch systems couldn't have housed more than one or two dozen missiles apiece, three at the absolute outside, and that many at the cost of a range measured only in triple, rather than quadruple, digits. The rifle, with a magazine of indeterminate size and almost certainly chambered in an asinine proprietary caliber, remained a more ambiguous question mark, but on the whole 'Iscariot's mount seemed to Kari more a sprinter than a marathon runner, her lighter-duty weaponry and modest ammunition stores unlikely to dent appreciably the numbers that Gus had dumped into 413's lap.

But that was reckoning without that energy blade of hers, of course, which in the merc's hands shook out as one of the more potent force-multipliers that Kari had encountered - even by the standards of the Security Forces; she'd have been willing to bet that, in a pinch, it could extend his munitions supply almost indefinitely. _Wonder what tales it would tell, if it could talk..._

'Iscariot' slid smoothly into position three hundred meters behind hers and six from the original battleline, 'Harley' and 'Swath' converging on his wing to reform _Kusa's_ northern element; the KiSec pair resumed fire the moment they had a line of sight, augmenting the measured bark of the Raven's rifle with the rumbling whine of fire-linked, high-out plasma cannons. Electric thunder pealed continuously as they poured ionized energy into the ghost lines, shockwaves billowing outward from the crash of superheated oxygen and nitrogen against midsummer night air that was merely warm, and that on a scale graduated to temperatures an order of magnitude lower.

'Clear, "K-T",' the Raven commed; his signal popped and sputtered fitfully beneath the indirect assault of the stray energy caroming about the engagement zone, military-grade though his transceiver assembly undoubtedly was.

'Copy.' Forest-green eyes sawed across the _Geist_ front before Kari disengaged, funneling updates to her mental plot of the battlefield until the last possible moment; she saw it half in the real-time imagery of the HFD and half in the abstracted vector lines and tac evals to which her mind instinctively reduced the incoming data, between which perspectives she had learned to alternate as easily as she might toggle a display setting. Her likeliest fallback route she found in the consensus of both vantages, and with a handful of shots sighted just _so_...

The ghost MT that Kari had singled out managed a final, halting step before the damage her plasmafire had wrought caught up with it, sagging against another that had passed too close and pulling the other machine down along with it. Accelerating into a leftward bank that tried to shove her out the other side of her Muscle Tracer's fuselage, Kari scooted through the hole she'd torn in the web of tracers that Gus had thrown across the field, this time with Maggie bolted to her exhaust manifolds; after three years of service together they knew one another's in-cockpit cues like an open book, coördinating their maneuvers with near-intuitive ease.

Indeed, the quintet as a whole fell into the pattern as though they'd practiced it a hundred times previous, pair and trio each covering the other in turn as they seasawed their line 'set-ward to align on _Kilo's_ fourth platoon; six, then nine, then twelve hundred meters passed without serious incident, whereupon a shower of ATA's burst from the command hub's walls to redouble the intensity of the manmade tempest lashing the south-lying ghost wing. The five-kilogram, shaped charge warhead around which each missile was built produced a visible explosion as anticlimactic as it was ephemeral, a pulse of light and sound so fleeting one would almost believe they had imagined it, but the effect on the oncoming _Geister_ gave the lie: a dozen jets of liquid-hot alloy, molded and accelerated to several times the speed of sound by a dozen conical boots of explosive blocks blowing in sequence, arrowed down through air and Muscle Tracer armor with equal ease to immolate whatever components lay between them and the desert floor, punching a dozen ragged puncture wounds in the front ranks. The advance waivered perceptibly, forced to trade forward speed in exchange for breathing room, as Gus reordered his freshly perforated lines, and scoured in alternating quarters by incessant plasmafire from one half of _Kusa_ or the other - but as it forged doggedly ahead, weathering with unnerving, single-minded determination the abuse raining down upon it as it drove for the walls, the battle for command of the southern flank wound urgently, increasingly taut.

The AC Team's four and one raced a shadow's breadth ahead of catastrophe, quick hands and quicker reflexes blurring to muzzy indistinction the line between reaction and precognition, but Kari could almost hear the scales creak beneath the weight of stochastic probability, conceding with reluctant objectivity that their eventual fracture was framed most accurately in temporal, rather than conditional, terms. For, however often or hard or well a pilot trained, however thoroughly they might know their machine inside and out, no one either side of the Surface could perform flawlessly on a timeline of any meaningful length; the confluence of snap judgments, personal conditioning, gut instinct, and blind, stupid luck known in martial parlance by the conventional descriptor 'battle' was as complex a phenomenon as any that one might care to catalogue, and like any similarly elaborate mechanism was prone to disastrous failure should one of its components misfire - which, as any soldier knew all too well, they could and most assuredly would. Equipment malfunctioned, orders were miscommunicated, or any one of a hundred other varieties of mistake were made with shorter- or farther-reaching consequences, their number and severity, in the manner of any such statistical manifestation, a simple function of a given sortie's duration.

Any operation with half a working brain behind it, of course, would provide to a reasonable extent for such contingencies, arraying reserves, alternate routes, and other failsafes about the objective as it could - but it was with little exaggeration, if any, that 'all fucked up' captured the most normal situational tenor to which soldiers were acclimated. The better share of the plans set down for the command hub's defense had been violently scuttled when the five attack helicopters of its slightly reinforced Overwatch Flight were put out of action, three destroyed outright while covering Kilo Company's retreat, the other two limping back to 413 on a rotor and a prayer. _And shaving our margin of error down to sweet fuck all in the process..._ But the indelicate (or, as her mother would have had it, 'unseemly') ire rumbling about the basal reaches of Kari's throat wasn't directed at them so much as the notoriously inconstant winds of fortune that, with impenitent disregard for individual station or worth, could change direction as quickly as Tychë snapped her fingers. Lieutenants Fischer and Dannil had been married, and Captain Grant engaged - and just like that, they were gone, survived by an unsuspecting widow and widower, and a young fiancé who didn't know that her heart had been broken yet; because a radar warning receiver had been a millisecond too slow to pick up the missile dropped onto its tail, or an adverse gust happened to be a hair too strong, they had been reduced to a single-line entry on just one of twenty or more KIA reports that would be sent on to EastCOM Home at week's end.

Worse still - and of more immediate relevance, however heartless it might feel to rank them so - more would inevitably follow, and that precisely _because_ of the gap left by Overwatch in 413's order of battle. 'The more you lose, the more you will,' ran the aphorism as old as the Security Forces, and Kari feared that the struggle for the command hub might well vindicate the KiSec strategist who had coined it. The eH.27 _Arbalest_ that EarthGov's own Marta-Murin built on license from Chancewelle wouldn't win wars in and of itself, any more than her 'Tracer or 'Iscariot's 'Core would - well, _probably_ not the Raven's Armored Core, anyway - but its twenty-five millimeter cannon and bevy of air-to-ground ordnance were the next best thing to having Jupiter looking over one's shoulder, and Kari would have given half her MT's minimal armament to have the remaining pair of them back in the air. Just shy of every last defensive scenario on which she had been briefed was formulated with the assumption that close air support was in place, depending - heavily, given the numerical superiority that Gus could evidently afford to lavish on every Surface-forsaken engagement - upon the loiter capability of the 'Arby' to force any _Geist_ aggressors to divide their attention between threats in three dimensions rather than two; it was a great truism of tactical planning that even the most intelligent and brilliant mind was hardwired to think along horizontal planes to the near-wholesale exclusion of the vertical, which blindspot a savvy tactician could exploit to often great effect.

_But._ Two score shades of red and yellow, blue and white, cartwheeled across Kari's flight helmet as they might a madman's canvas, the variegated light of plasma and tracers and thruster efflux filtering through viewscreen and mirrored visor to fall gently across features a sculpture might have envied - even arranged with a sour twist as they were. _But..._

But, with Overwatch out of the fight 413 had lost one of its keenest edges. If the history of the _Geisteskrieg_ as written thus far were a weather vane of any authority at all, then it was flagrantly, smack-between-the-eyes obvious that the EarthGov-led coalition on the 'Line would never in ten lifetimes match the numbers that Gus could field - but then, they didn't have to, for there were a hundred ways or more to balance out ostensibly inequable odds. In the sum total of the centuries that its existence spanned, from pre-Destruction incorporation to frontier mobilization, not once had Kisaragi fought a war in which it was anything but outnumbered, were it by the MARSer juggernaut, the scarcely less formidable ChiFor, or a rough and ready confederation of overweening petty syndicates - and one and all, Marsie, Kiff, and indie alike, had been humbled time and again by the Security Forces, often as not badly enough that no few years passed before they thought to make a second or third assay of company territory. Like the most successful underdogs to set down their names in the book of war, KiSec had learned quickly and early the key interrelation between quality of force and quantity, whereby one, via a nigh algebraic process of conversion, might effectively supply the want of the other: where the Kisaragi rosters fell short, superior training and _esprit de corps_ took up the slack.

Thus, while Colonel Opnoff couldn't possibly hope to match the _Geisteswehr_ billet for billet, neither was it necessary that he do so at all, for the greater diversity of Blue Side TO&E and the ingenuity of its deployment could, if managed with care, make up the difference.

_Except when it's raining down on our heads in little fucking pieces._ A part of Kari balked at so callous a thought - the men and women of Overwatch were fellow pilots, after all, no less committed to the cause than she and hers - but cruel or no, bald fact was bald, inescapable fact: for all its efficacity the _Arbalest_ was of no use to them anywhere save in the skies above, without which buffer the command hub's remaining defenders had been driven to within a whisper of the relentless querning of chance. Their chances of success, already slim and fast waning further, now hinged upon either the timely arrival of reinforcements - which would never materialize; the nearest ground forces of any consequence were stationed at Rightstead, over one hundred kilometers to the south - or an impossibly polarized casualty exchange rate - which was...well, impossible. That 413 had so far held firm, if only by its fingertips, was a minor miracle in and of itself, and it was unlikely to survive the night to beat back the plainly determined _Geist_ assault unless it suffered no further losses to enemy action - on which prospect, just as plainly, none but the pitiably stupid would think to pin their hopes. Sooner or later their own lines would give, and as long as they had refused to bend to the mounting statistical pressure, now they could only break when it at last built beyond their ability to withstand.

Kari's features took on a wry set. As tactical analyses went, 'we're fucked' was rather more informal a conclusion than most would draw, but any competent assessment of the hub's present disposition would reduce to much the same, however optimistically couched in the conditional or the potential. _We'd better find the mother of all aces up our sleeve if we're going to make it out of this one._

A distant, staccato burble, reminiscent of tires on the rumble strips of Caralaine's countless thoroughfares, broke into her brown study, Charlie Company's belt-fed grenade launcher adding its peculiar voice to the thunderous choir of friendly weapons fire. An invisible hailstorm of fist-sized explosive charges pelted across the ghost units - if units they were; Kari had seen little in the way of identifiable platoon- or company-level cohesion - following in the wake of ACT 'Iscariot's relocation 'set-ward, of which fire support she tracked the progress by the fiery garden that blossomed from north to south. More than the resultant heat, largely an incidental by-product of the detonation of each grenade's tiny core of Composition C, it was the basic laws of fluid dynamics that wrought the greatest damage, wave after wave of air compressed hard as rock propagating at hundreds of kilometers per hour to bowl over the frontmost _Geister_ like so many toys. MT's went down in half a dozen different kinds of mangled heap, legs wrenched into shapes to make a cephalopod cringe, weapons emplacements mauled almost beyond recognition, or armor plating flayed from their mechanical bodies to expose the magneto-hydraulic 'musculature' beneath, some rent further by a cascade of secondary explosions as their own ordnance destabilized; a handful of _Bären_ caught in the downpour, though a good deal sturdier than their younger siblings, withstood it little better, and frequently contributed to the bedlam as their powerplants cycled up into critical overloads.

But now that he'd pushed inside the range of his own, smaller-bore weaponry, Gus was disinclined to accept his mistreatment without protest. The lanicrete façade, still some eight hundred meters behind 'Iscariot' and _Kusa_, erupted with thousands of near-simultaneous impacts, machine gun fire - in a caliber that military and corporate intelligence had yet to conclusively determine - sparking off the unyielding surface to ricochet skyward or burrow into the earth below; rockets or semi-guided missiles, depending upon minor variations in _Geist_ design philosophy that made sense only to them, marched a more serious chain of impacts across the walls, a few slamming into the reinforced towers that commanded the corners. As the gap between 413 and its assailants narrowed the night air congealed into a soup of tracers, rocket motors, plasma trails, and explosions thick enough that it seemed to Kari she could walk - or rather, swim - from one end of the engagement zone to the other without once touching the ground, and her hands vised tighter around the grips of her control yoke for the sight of the heavy grenade rifles favored by some ghost AC's landing hits along the palisade. High ground or no, with nothing more than body armor between them and any return fire that might slip over the heights at the wrong angle Charlie Company was still relatively exposed, and every human impulse unanimously importuned for Kari to _do something_. But however much she wanted to acquiesce, she knew that the walls, close on to indestructible unless a _Geist_-kissing _flotilla_ of weapons satellites managed to run the Defense Force's hunter-killer blockade in orbit - and Surface help them all if Lawdas repeated itself here tonight - were better protection than any that she could provide them; both her parents and, later, her instructors had taught her to make decisions with her head rather than her heart, and the heavy weapons crewers she would best serve keeping to her assigned role in the evolving fray.

Swallowing her frustration, thence, she quelled the urge, misguided if well-meaning, to break formation and light into Charlie Company's most immediate source of grief, instead leading Maggie through their next 'set-ward leg. They slid in and back out - or so she hoped; the alert tone that warned of an impending enemy weapons lock warbled fretfully in her ear as a hundred different sets of targeting sensors brushed over her MT, though it seemed no one of them had yet managed to hang on long enough to wring out a concrete firing solution - they slid in and out of _Geist_ sights as they pushed across the six hundred meter interval, crossing and recrossing one another's paths on offset, sinusoidal trajectories that snaked past 'Iscariot's position toward the fifteen hundred meter line; a dozen species of kinetic, chemical, and electromagnetic energy harnessed either to propulsive or to destructive ends hared wildly across the battlefield behind them, throwing Kari's shadow halfway to the _eighteen_ hundred mark as she whipped hard around.

'You're green for go, "Iscariot".' Internal temperatures leapt into the triple digits with her first shots, then tipped over into a more gradual rate of climb as radiative systems tried to tug them back down; plasma bolts hopscotched from overeager MT to overeager MT, even clipping the odd _Bär_ as she and Maggie picked up where the other half of ACT 'Iscariot' - or of _Kusa_; the one was more or less synonymous with the other now, to Kari's mind - left off to disengage.

'Roger, "K-T".' Quick to adapt to the Raven's insistence, not unlike Kari's own, that he be the first in and last out, Jake and Wil withdrew first, 'Iscariot' tarrying just long enough to fire off a tight screen of vertical missiles, and then following a second or so behind. Kari's attention bounced between the heads-forward display and her pilots - in which category some inexplicable, quasi-maternal instinct saw fit to number the Raven as well, commanding officer or no - as they fell back, skittery anxiety lacing her every shot and movement as she counted down the meters.

_Just half a klick to go..._

Just half a klick left to go, and against all odds they'd so far kept ahead of...well, the odds, drawing their lines slowly even in good order to match the smartest parade ground display. _Well, maybe if the other formations were taking _potshots_ at yours the whole time, anyway._ She could almost believe that their good fortune might hold to see them through battle's end - or night's or eternity's, whichever happened to come first - but she dismissed the thought as soon as it had formed. Don't try to win the war, she and her fellow Basic Officer Candidates had been told time and time again - that was what generals were for. As junior officers their job - their _only_ job, under fire - was to maintain a micron focus and ensure that their platoon or Team or section survived the next sixty seconds, for if they could make it through sixty seconds, then they could make it through three hundred; if through five minutes, through ten; through ten, thirty. Timescales at the level of the conflict writ large consisted of nothing more than a great many such minute-long spans strung together into hours, days, or months, and the more capable - or at least better paid - hands in which rested macroscopic concerns depended absolutely upon the moment-to-moment successes of their line officers.

The larger battle for the 413 Forward would look to itself in due time, under the watchful eye of Lieutenant Colonel Tiering and his staff; the most important task before Kari herself was to see to _Kusa_ as 'Iscariot's _de facto_ XO, or something very much like one, letting go even of her concerns for MTT _Mura_ on the northern flank - to the degree that she could, at any rate; the generic 'back' of her mind seemed possessed of an unbounded capacity for worry - and trusting to her own exec to mind the other half of her command. And in truth, though clearly ill at ease with his brevet promotion to lieutenant - if still marked round about by the look of a man with every intent of marching through the nearest bulkhead, and Surface help the bulkhead if it had other ideas, then of late he seemed to shrink into the back of his uniform somehow, as though trying to put as much distance as he could between himself and the silver bar with its thin, diagonal slash of gold that adorned each lapel - Len Adaman not only knew his business well, but knew it _damned_ well, to which experience Kari would entrust the safety of her pilots more readily than to any five of the brightest young officers from any five of the best academies in Layered or the Interior. A career NCO, he had been assigned to _Tela_ straight out of Basic Flight - famously impatient of many of the most traditional martial sticking points, the Kisaragi Security Forces were unusual as much for their flying enlistedmen as for any of their other quirks - with which Team he had remained ever since; having served under Hartford Quinn's predecessor, and 'broken in' Quinn himself when he was still 'green as a pickle', Adaman was the oldest fixture of the unit save for its name and history.

In short, there was no more qualified a man or woman in whose care Kari might leave _Mura_, freeing her - in theory - to concentrate solely on her temporarily constricted bailiwick; with an effort, she let out a long breath that may or may not have been calming. _Focus._ Another breath, a hair more relaxed than the last. _The next sixty seconds._ Just make it through sixty seconds, and worry about the rest when they got there. _Sixty seconds._

They made it through five.

Her only warning was a pale magnesium streak to the north, too thick, even several hundred meters distant, to signify anything but a _Geist_ rifle grenade. Whether it was a pilot's sixth sense that pulled her attention after it or prosaic, human curiosity, her helmet swiveled left in time to watch the oversized projectile disappear against Jake's fantail in a fireball that lifted the entire MT nearly onto its nose even as it spun it about, throwing her heart and her stomach both into her throat in the bargain; Kari didn't freeze so much as time's passage, the orderly procession of one moment after another that she had always felt within herself, ground to a sickening halt. _Jake!_ In the stead of her normal, unitary sense of self there were suddenly three of her, six of her, a _dozen_ of her, a hundred voices all filling her head near to bursting with a scarcely intelligible cacophony of demands, pleas, and queries to which there were no answers; with no transition at all she was of a hundred conflictory minds at once, each fighting tooth and nail for precedence.

One - the smallest, thank the Surface; that wide-eyed rich girl, painfully naïve and startled seemingly by any and every facet of the world beyond the lofty towers of Caralaine, she had buried deep when she traded her silver spoon for a hard-won commission - one was frantic in a way that she'd never known, scrabbling against the sides of her skull in a raw panic for the twist of happenstance to which she hadn't the faintest beginnings of an idea how to respond; another, nearly as useless, merely stared out her eyes in bleak disbelief; the young woman who had trodden early the path to adulthood, her childhood cut short by the weighty expectations of her parents, proved considerably more helpful, soothing the frenzied desperation of the first and taking her firmly in hand with the combination of command and no-nonsense, level-headed practicality that she had learned at an age when most girls still swooned over pop- and movie stars; the grown woman whose emotions were still raw no matter how closely tethered, reeling, where her pilots couldn't see it, from the loss of a man who was - had been - not only her commanding officer but a good friend besides, wanted to fall to her knees and weep, alternately wracked by blackest self-loathing and the burning shame of her failure to uphold the promise to keep them safe that she'd made over Captain Quinn's grave.

Only her training, mercilessly hammered into mind and body alike until it was as much a part of her as any natural instinct, held her together, and for her instructors' remorseless diligence a detached part of her offered the Surface her sincerest, most fervent thanks. At a look that would flatly brook no dissent the mental clamor around her fell silent, in the room of which Kari Travess the KiSec pilot began barking orders backed by the full force and dignity both of her rank and of every last whit of the aristocratic bearing that she had taken in from her infancy: at her command were hands and feet fallen numb with shock kept moving over the control yoke and pedals, and her brain's stunned evaluative centers jolted back to life, the entire extended network of her perception, processing, and responses pushed through the forms of normal operation by her inner officer's sheer strength of will.

Even time, ever marching to the beat only of its own haughty drum, jumped when she said 'jump' and smartly at that, setting seconds and milliseconds back in motion so quickly that one might have thought they had never stopped. Kari nearly gasped for the sudden assault of her senses, buffeted by the floodtide of visual, aural, and tactile data first stemmed by her initial shock then turned loose in the same instant by the restoration of temporal order: the thousand sounds of the battlefield were a gale in her ears, the bite of the flight harness knives on her skin, and the viewscreen display blinding to shame lunar daybreak. Almost more startling than the return of external stimuli, the small chronometric readout snugged up against the slip of an angle between forward view panel and the top of the cockpit 'canopy' - though it was no such thing at all, the name had centuries earlier been carried over from the fixed-wing aircraft that, before the last vanished from the skies, had provided a ready-made terminological family for then-emergent Muscle Tracer technology - the small chronometric readout between view panel and 'canopy' hadn't so much as twitched, claiming by implication that, somehow, the geological epoch that had elapsed since Jake was hit had disappeared into a span of less than a second without so much as a ripple to mark its passing.

Which assertion was no less false than it was ridiculous...but the finer points of temporal flow and mechanics were neither here nor there; Kari gave her head a brisk shake to clear out the last of the fog, putting back in order the thoughts that events of the preceding second or two had knocked into such disarray. As quickly as her psyche had splintered into its hundred discordant personae it was whole again, though not before the KiSec pilot gave her a final once-over. _Keep it together, girl_, she told Kari gruffly, if not unkindly, as she vanished back into the recesses of her subconscious. _They'll need you._

But she need not have worried, for Kari's instructors had done their job well. However many the millennia of purgatory that she had endured a helpless spectator since the rifle grenade struck, once the larger world beyond the confines of her own mind lurched back onto its normal track she was already outpacing it: Jake's MT had hardly careened through a single, blast-induced rotation before her hand was moving for the comm panel and this time by more than simple rote, her tongue cocked and laden with the request for support that _would_ be airborne in the next two seconds if she had to make it herself; just then she could have suggested at least seven anatomically improbable things that the proper chain of command could do with itself.

But _she_ need not have worried about _'Iscariot'_ either. Even before Jake's momentum spun itself out the Raven had turned _Knell_ very nearly on the proverbial decicred and reversed course, and as the crippled MT plowed a shallow furrow into the earth to slide to a stop he had _Kusa_ fanning out in a defensive pattern in front of it, orders issuing like rifle cracks. What missiles remained in his magazines he spent without hesitation, spidery exhaust plumes arcing by the quarter dozen into the airspace above as a plasma stormfront broke against the _Geist_ van below, and through the electromagnetic havoc that so much hard energy wreaked with wireless communications his voice cut like obsidian.

' "Echo", "Swath" is down - repeat, "Swath" is down. Request all available fire support and...heavy lift gear for retrieval.' The pause, only a shade above imperceptibility, stretched his transmission by perhaps a few hundred milliseconds at most, but it threatened to swallow the little hope to which Kari still clung, for she knew that no one in their right mind or anywhere near it would authorize that kind of recovery operation under fire; the frenzy and panic that had earlier threatened to sweep her away had subsided to a raging torrent she rode with grim, iron determination, held at the very edge of control even as she fought to keep the _Geister_ at bay, but now it bucked and heaved dangerously.

' "Swath",' status,' she demanded over _Kusa's_ tac channel, with desperation, lead-weighted dread, and paternal gentility all braided tightly into as bizarre an overlay of audio frequencies as her vocal chords had ever produced; in Kari's ears her voice was edging toward something like half an octave higher than she thought it should have been, though it remained blessedly free of the tremble that she hadn't been at all certain she would be able to stabilize before she spoke. ' "Swath",' respond.'

A millisecond perusal of everything that Mirage technical manuals, KiSec training exercises, and frontline experience had ever taught her about the hover MT's she and her pilots operated was sufficient to suggest no fewer than eleven possible and wholly innocent explanations for Jake's silence - the destruction of his transceiver assembly, perhaps, or EM feedback from either a damaged system or some fluke, inexplicable property of the rifle grenade itself, or maybe just a general power loss - but in the woolly, electric scratch of the empty airwaves she heard only the laughter and mockery of the damned.

_No._ She clamped down on the thought with a strength born of the unlikely union of desperation and resolve, crushing it into non-existence in her mental grasp. Desperation, because without question or equivocation she simply couldn't bear to go back on her word, to break her graveside vow; resolve, because - without question or equivocation - she _would not_.

'Transceiver's out,' she decided matter-of-factly, raising to a beneficent Surface a wordless prayer that her pronouncement sounded as firm to the rest of _Kusa_ as it did in her own headset. 'We'll have to coördinate around it.' She watched her cannonfire stitch kill-to-kill across the encroaching enemy host with no more than mechanical gratification, seized and driven only by the overriding imperative of ensuring Jake's safety.

'Roger, "K-T".' The Raven's acknowledgment seemed faraway, or perhaps he was just distracted - or, maybe it was neither; to Kari's perception reality had warped or inverted into unintelligibility, casting every familiar fixture of her world in an alien, almost unrecognizable light, and just then even so prosaic a task as the interpretation of the emotional content of another human voice lay beyond her ability. ' "Echo", did you catch that?'

Heartbeats drew out into hours as they awaited the Operator's reply, and _Kusa's_ remaining pilots pulled into a hermetic, defensive orbit around their disabled comrade, coherent immolation fairly streaming from weapon muzzles at the highest rate of which their radiative systems were permissive; just beyond, _Knell_ bobbed and ducked and wove like a thing alive, clipping off rifle shots as quickly as her fire control systems could acquire a new sight picture while the _Geist_ noose inched meter by meter around their flanks. Before long they would be irretrievably cut off, a tiny, living atoll overwashed by a titanium-ceramic tsunami.

'Copy, Raven,' 'Echo' responded at last - or immediately; it was impossible to tell which - her transmission already laced with a sympathy that confirmed the fears gnawing at Kari's stomach even before the other woman completed her thought. 'But that's a...negative on retrieval; I'm sorry, "Iscariot", but it's too hot out there.'

Shoulders slumped, and Kari's heart plummeted through the soles of her boots for the death sentence that masqueraded as an answer - but it was only for an instant; quick as a synapse could fire her back was ramrod-straight again, and her body's chief circulatory organ back in its customary place within her ribcage. That 413 command and control might accede to 'Iscariot's request had never been more than a fool's hope anyway, on which she hadn't seriously intended to rely, and though a small part of her wanted to hate 'Echo' for the bad news that she bore the Operator's voice brimmed with as much misery as the bounds of professionalism could accommodate - besides which, Kari knew every bit as well as she that to dispatch a recovery team now, into the very midst of the ghost storm, would be as good as pulling the trigger herself.

And so they would have to manage on their own. She couldn't begin to fathom the depths of ingenuity or impossibly good fortune that they would have to plumb in the attempt, but plumb them she would, if it were the last decision that she made - she would sell her soul to Rin Unin himself, it that was what it took.

'I understand, "Echo",' the Raven reassured her quietly, an oddly tender pitch to his tone; the comm whispered with the release of a resolute breath, just above inaudibility. 'I'll take care of it.'

Despite the uniquely mammalian admixture of salt and water that her exertions wrung from every fair centimeter of her skin, Kari's blood turned to a frozen slurry at 'Iscariot's deadly-calm assertion. For at the last he had retreated from the battlefield that they shared to another, distant universe, a binary realm cold and dead and terrible wherein Heisenberg's unassailable prescript lay in tatters; there the uncertainty graven so indelibly upon the fabric of Kari's world held no sway, toppled from its lofty, inscrutable throne - and 'Iscariot' was its usurper.

'_Kusa_,' he ordered, his voice flat and cold as a blade across the immane gulf between them, 'I need a clear vector - keep them off my back.' From her position, just now out ahead and to southward of them to contain an especially recusant ghost salient, _Knell_ was already falling back as 'Iscariot' spoke; the gray-blue Armored Core struck a last MT's legs from its hips in parting, and loosed two final shots before - incomprehensibly - she flung aside her rifle.

Even as she sighted in on another target, Kari gaped in disbelief. ' "Iscariot", what-?'

'It's all right, "K-T",' he cut her off, not ungently in spite of the adamantine edge to his voice; for tenths of a second at a time his AC's silver-drab weapon caught and scattered the moonlight as it spun away on a careless 'set-ward trajectory. 'It's all right,' the Raven repeated. 'I promise you - as long as I'm breathing, no one touches him.'

**R****IN**** U****NIN**

Deep within _Elysium's_ chest, her heart reverberated with a primal scream that echoed the birth of the cosmos.

In the room of a nebula's cyclopean gravitational potential energy her ultra-compact fusion generator layered field lines of magnetic force, coaxing heat and pressure to levels of which the sphere of cotidian human experience could ill-facilitate meaningful comprehension. Condemned for the brief remainder of their existence to this million-degree hell, hydrogen and lithium-seven were ionized on the instant, shorn of their electrons as the dead were irrevocably torn from their loved ones when they at last faced the boatman. Yet in one another they found a transitory solace, for where proton encountered lithium the two no longer recoiled from each other's touch, as was their customary wont, but instead clung together as the fires of Gehenna raged about them. And while theirs was a necessarily fleeting union - as would prove any such bond in the flames, were they natural or factitious, of the stellar forge, the only true alchemichal laboratory that the universe had ever known - however fleeting their union it was in no sense for naught, for in a final generative act protium and lithium coalesced, parting not as they had been but as twin helium-four nuclei, functionally identical at every level above the quantum.

Howling with the wild energies of creation itself, they beat against the confines of their invisible cage with a fury that their genitors could never have contemplated, much less matched, until a whisper from the physical constants that served them for instincts showed the way, its gates thrown wide by a command from on high. Protons and neutrons bound to one another from birth raced along magnetic avenues, their frantic career carrying them from the seething nuclear furnace that had been their cradle faster than human thought could register; at the final straightaway they paused, marshalling their numbers for infinitesimal fractions of a second before plunging ahead into the frigid realm without.

Charged particles kicked free of _Elysium's_ thrusters with an Olympian thunderclap as sun-hot plasma battered aside oxygen and nitrogen, throwing the Armored Core like a toy in the opposite direction. Sparing minimal delta-v for evasion, she bore down on the disabled hover MT with more than a quarter of the velocity that a sound wave could muster at sea level, trading her rifle for a few kilometers per hour more in a desperate bid to outrace the inevitable; the weapon's magazine was nearly depleted anyway, and it was too large regardless for the in-built holster clamp on her hip.

' "Iscariot", what-?'

'It's all right, "K-T".' Rin sympathized with Lieutenant Travess' incredulity - would likely have shared it, were he on the other end of the comm - but right then time was too precious a commodity to spend on explanation, however short, of his intent; in its stead he could only offer her his solemn vow. 'It's all right,' he told her again. 'I promise you - as long as I'm breathing, no one touches him.'

If pressed, Rin couldn't have said with better than even-money certainty whether he would succeed or fail in the attempt - but to the very last letter, he meant every word. He knew - _knew_ - how dangerous attachment was, how easily it could snare, but before he had realized what was happening the pilots of _Kusa_ had slipped past his defenses, overrunning the walls that he'd so carefully built up and so vigilantly maintained, and he could no more deny his affection for them than he could the earth beneath _Elysium's_ feet.

_And..._ Memories stabbed at him out of the dark places in which he had chained them, striking, even after so many years, with the inerrant accuracy of a stiletto darting between rib and armor plate. And, he knew, no matter the cool remove that his logic centers counseled he could never have done any less for Jake - scarcely more than a boy - than his level best, or lived with himself if he had. Once before...once before he had been too late, been too damnably slow - and it had cost him everything. He had sworn that it would never happen again, and here, now, he would leave the field with Jake beside him, or not at all.

_Elysium_ snapped around in a clockwise, one hundred eighty degree turn, her FLEET's now firing in counter-thrust to drop her out of her breakneck flight beside the wounded Muscle Tracer; miscellaneous sheets of dirt and small pebbles geysered waist-high as her feet skidded roughly over the ground, before raining back down ahead of her - or rather, behind her - or flashing to silicate vapor where they strayed too close to her boosters. ' "Swath",' Rin announced for Jake's benefit, hoping fervidly that Kari had been right about his transceiver, 'if your comm's still receiving then don't mind the bump; you're going to be all right.' _You have my word._

The very first MT's had been balky and awkward affairs, designed solely as a proof of concept and so consisting in little more than bulbous cockpits and gawky, reverse-jointed legs. But subsequent refinements had accrued in rapid order, the technology maturing apace even as the world ended, and before the preposterously well-armored access doors of Layered - built to withstand any- and everything short of the physical breakup of the planet itself - were finally sealed shut the Muscle Tracer had already taken no few strides in the direction of its modern descendant. To legs and torso were added a sensor 'head', at once elevating the machine's 'eyes' to a more favorable vantage and clearing additional space within the main body, and then arms - little more than stubby weapon mounts at first, but evolving rapidly into a faithful rendition of the human appendage. The minor engineering nightmare associated with its mechanical replication would be offset, it had been maintained, by the greater flexibility - both kinaesthetic and functional - that it afforded, which argument had in the end carried the day.

An ever-widening conversance with the extended family of interrelated technologies spurred on full-scale mass production, giving way thence to the breakthrough modularity that was the defining hallmark of the 'Cored MT', and in the Armored Core the Muscle Tracer's promise was fully realized at last of a weapons platform capable of movement in true simulacrum of the human range of motion. A well-populated minority of Ravens, of course, specifically favored more atavistic chassis, substituting heavier weapons for the arms that, to their minds, were so much dead weight, or preferring the twitch-response motility of a well-tuned hover pod to the admittedly lower speed limits of bipedal locomotion - but in Rin's initially personal, and later well-versed, opinion, it was the basic, mid-weight humanoid frame that was far and away the most adaptive of the lot, not at all unlike the species after which it had been modeled. And so he had dedicated himself to the mastery of the classical forms that so many disdained, though if today it had been his matchless bladework on which he relied most heavily, then now he was most ardently thankful for nothing more than he was for _Elysium's_ strong right arm.

With unflappable, Stoic indifference to the hurricane of fulvid tracers and fulminating plasma, of guided missiles and unguided rockets, that threatened to sweep all of them away in the next instant, the Armored Core leaned over and took firm hold of Jake's MT, as though to shield it from the storm.

And with a mighty heave, she _pulled_.

Angular heels and toes bit deeply into the high desert floor, pulverizing earth and rock into undifferentiated sand beneath her feet as the mass of the other machine, as per the dictates of Newton's Third Law, pushed back, momentarily doubling her seven-ton weight; magneto-hydraulic muscles flexed and bunched under her dusty, carbon-scored alloy skin, straining with an audible groan against performance ceilings they'd never before been called upon to approach, much less exceed. Breath bated and discarded in some forgotten corner his lungs, Rin had eyes only for the row of digital stress gauges temporarily inset at the bottom left of the HFD, red-lined just for a start as he struggled to counterbalance design tolerances and exigency. While immeasurably strong by any human metric conceivable, whether or no it were ruled according to the storied feats of Samson and Hercules, _Elysium's_ MARTE arms, of rugged Crest manufacture though they were, were built to absorb recoil and withstand the impact shock of close-quarters combat - not, as so many works of fiction supposed, to drag her approximate body weight through a morass of hostile fire.

And yet, they would.

'Come on, Elly,' Rin murmured her encouragement, his utterance pitched for the two of them alone - 'I know you can do it, baby.' He knew, because in the course of their two-and-a-half decade partnership, he had explored her every frontier, mapped her every limit, until at last he had assayed the successful escalade of the final walls between them - her limitations had become his, and his become hers. He knew, because side-by-side they had learned that what must be done, _could_ be done.

He knew, because in all of their time together, through all the years and battles and trials they had shared, she had never, ever failed him.

Never.

With the slate-like screech of titanium and ceramic across rock, the grounded Muscle Tracer lurched forward a meter, then three, then five, each break in forward momentum progressively shortening until the two machines were angling slowly but steadily for the haven of friendly lines, and - just as slowly - picking up speed as they went. 'I've got you, "Swath", sit tight.' Somewhere in the petrified forest of alveoli Rin found his breath again, sending it on its way in a rush sharp enough to count for a gasp. Torque levels in _Elysium's_ joints had fallen off to land squarely in the yellow, and if they were still one hundred fifty percent higher than anything close to advisable, unquestionably necessitating a thorough cycle of follow-on maintenance, then his Armored Core would see them through.

Rin knew that she would.

**K****ARI**** T****RAVESS**

Had Kari not been strapped fast to her Muscle Tracer's shock couch, or her full and undivided attention given over to the minor affair of her team's continued survival - and had the human body been capable of the requisite anatomical contortions - she would have kicked herself for the blatant perspicuity of 'Iscariot's solution, as well as the entirety with which she had overlooked it. _Of course - _Knell's_ arms._ Though so mundane a sight that they had long since ceased to consciously register, she had always known that the limbs of a Cored _Muscle Tracer_ were more than showroom window dressing, their functionality as close to their human antecedents' as modern engineering could carry them - and any other time, Kari would no doubt have felt the embarrassment that her oversight merited.

But just now, to judge by the diametrically adverse impulses arcing back and forth across her synaptic gaps she could have cackled manically and sobbed hysterically with relief, and throw in falling to her knees in thanks for good measure. Better than a third of a kilometer still separated her pilot from the comparative safety of Kilo Company's fourth platoon, the cannons of which bellowed incessantly with the thunderous report of their covering fire, but where before Kari could only hold to the hope, slim verging on despairing, that they might somehow hold the line where Jake's MT had fallen, in the Raven's actions now she could just descry the outlines of something very much like a chance of success. _Thank the good Surface above._

But as much as it did on the unyielding - and, Kari would proudly concede, altogether _Kisaragi_ - spirit of _Knell's_ pilot, 'Iscariot's gambit depended on what reduction in both fire and numbers MTT _Kusa_ could extort from the _Geist_ ranks. ' "Impulse", crazy eights on my mark,' she ordered - ' "Harley", you're on clean-up.' Two sets of double comm clicks acknowledged receipt of the command as her eyes scrolled side to side across the virtual depth of the heads-forward display, watching the deciseconds spun out as she waited for her opening. Once she had just a degree or two more of clearance... 'Mark.'

She and her wingmate bounced away from one another like identical magnetic poles, reconverging heartbeats later to flash more or less perpendicularly across one another's paths, Kari ahead and Maggie behind, with scant meters to spare; they scissored left-to-right and right-to-left in a terrestrial reproduction of the aerial maneuver, led by the deep-bass electric whine of plasma cannons abandoned to lethal garrulity. But intended primarily to muddle enemy targeting solutions and draw the eye, the 'crazy eight', as it was known in the Security Forces' argot, was employed to its greatest effect in conjunction with a third pilot, and it was thus to Wil that the majority of distracted Muscle Tracers were lost - engaged in the futile task, as the two women made certain it remained, of tracking them through their interlocking sine and cosine curves, the nearest _Geister_ were a critical second too slow in their response to the lone MT innocuously following on behind.

A dozen shards of ruby, afire with the reflected light of a captive star, lacerated a half-dozen _Geist_ machines, either cutting them down where they stood - or darted or strutted - or touching off crippling strings of secondary reactions in their deceptively capacious magazines. A second cannonade came literally within centimeters of doubling their number, Wil's third shot only grazing a knobby, reverse-jointed knee where his others gutted boxy torsos or burned away armored generator housings - but by then Kari and Maggie were arcing outward rather than back in, their phantom figure-eight unraveling behind them as they swung around to neatly box in their would-be pursuers. Where seconds earlier they had faced the concentrated fire of only two, now hunters-turned-hunted had been inextricably pinned between six high-out plasma cannons, their detachment not so much breaking as disintegrating beneath their weight of fire.

Like perfectly formed gears the three _Kusanagi_ pilots came together in a loose, flexible delta formation, arrowing back 'set-ward to loop wide around 'Swath' and 'Iscariot' and align on their next attack run. Kari's bleakest fears, that she had led her team halfway across _Neue_ only to see them struck down one-by-one before her eyes, had been reanimated as a mindless, ravening beast that shivered the bars and triple-locks of the prison wherein she had sealed it away - there were so, _so_ many _Geister_ before them, and so very few defenders behind - but this time she didn't so much as hesitate: internally, she cocked her arm, and with a wordless cry she hurled the key into the unfathomed abyss within. Her revenant dubiety could only snarl in impotent rage before it gave up the ghost, slumping over the haft that still jutted from its chest. _Fuck you too_, Kari bade it farewell, with a chill grin that fell well short of her eyes.

Aloud, she offered Wil and Maggie a well-deserved round of congratulations. 'Good flying, _Kusa_ - keep it up, and you'll put the Defense Force out of business yet.' A confessedly wan attempt at humor even for Kari's reserved disposition, it nonetheless earned chuckles that were, if undoubtedly edged with tension, then still something more than merely dutiful.

'Yeah, you hear that, "Swath"?' Wil asked rhetorically by way of reassurance. 'You just hang in there, buddy - "K-T'll" make Gus sorry he got out of bed this morning.'

'And make him think _twice_ before he does it tomorrow,' Maggie chimed in.

Now Kari's smile did reach her eyes, rich, golden bars of sunlight slanting through the forest canopy, and it was several moments before she was willing to trust to her comm a voice gone abruptly husky - but before she could speak the _Geist_ lines parted ahead, two _B__ären_ charging from their midst like royal champions out of Homeric verse. Without ado they let fly a pair of probing shots each, although for the moment their characteristic accuracy - often as not murderously accurate, albeit somewhat stiff - had evidently deserted them, all four projectiles streaking well to the south of where _Kusa_ had be-

_Shit._

Kari's glance over her shoulder at 'Swath' and 'Iscariot' was a purely reflexive gesture, the automatic response of a body struggling to hold pace with her far swifter instincts and reasoning centers - she knew _exactly_ where the _Bären_ were aiming. While she had thus far seen neither hide nor hair of the _Geist_ command element on-scene, if it had the sense the Controller had given traffic lights then it would have long since reclassified the Raven as the most dangerous Defense Force asset in play at 413 Forward - for her own part, Kari had more than half a mind to broaden the geographical scope of that assessment to pull in the Silent Line writ whole - and at a guess it thought to captialize on 'Iscariot's current indisposal. Of the discernible principles that together constituted the _Geisteswehr's_ guiding mandate, never would any have been mistaken for honorable conduct or compassion, the thoroughgoing absence of which Isuka's destruction attested with blood-chilling clarity; where the men and women of KiSec - or any who served on the 'Line, Kari hoped - where the men and women in uniform Blue-side would at the least scruple, and more likely refuse, to open fire on a wounded or otherwise disabled foe, shying with natural revulsion from an act that for them skated within a scrape of murder, the _Geister_ would move with scarcely less hesitance than mercy, cutting down her pilot and 'her' Raven if given so much as half a chance.

But that, of course...

Thunderheads gathered in Kari's eyes as they narrowed, the forest passing at a stroke from high summer to deepest winter.

That wasn't going to happen.

' "Harley", "Impulse", you two spread out and take point.' Even as her lips were moving she suited orientation to orders, chopping back the throttle to fall in behind her wingmates. 'Let's see if we can't hem them in and get their attention.'

Wil and Maggie left clipped, twin affirmatives in their wake as they shot past her nine and three o'clock, the Team's triangular formation inverting and distending into a shallow, yawning 'V' that would permit of concentrated fire on any designated point in their weapon arcs, as well as threaten the ghost pair's flanks. Of course, if the _B__ä__ren_ chose to play it _smart_ they would split up, counterintuitive as the tack was, chancing the more tenuous efficacy of longer-range support to slip out from under _Kusa's_ double envelopment in miniature - but smart _money_ said they would opt instead to stick together, standing by the traditional wisdom that strength and safety both were most closely synonymous with plurality. Not that a tactical judgment call so-made would have been out-and-out wrong, not exactly - in point of fact, such would once upon a time have been something like standard procedure - it was just that the battlefield had evolved some hundred years gone in a different direction.

But then, in such consisted one of the more inexplicable dichotomies of the larger _Geist_ enigma, for alongside CMT tech that was arguably a generation ahead of the nearest Blue-side analog their stick personalities betrayed a bizarrely anachronistic bent, almost as though their pilot instructors were pulling from training manuals a century or more out of date. It hadn't yet proven a decisive factor in and of itself, in any of the war's engagements to date, oversized and -powered weaponry as well as inhuman reaction speeds making up the deficit, but there it was nevertheless - whatever it might mean for the _Geisteskrieg_ as a whole.

Yet if Kari could only speculate on the wider operational ramifications, then at the level of small-unit interchange where the strategic rubber met the tactical road it meant that _Kusa's_ present adversaries had in the end chosen...poorly, remaining close by one another's sides precisely as KiSec would have taught its own pilots to do nine or ten decades before E-Day - and exactly as she had hoped they might.

_Last mistake they'll ever make._

Although as the target brackets on her HFD blinked from off-orange to red and the first bolts of plasma stabbed out at the nearest _B__är_, she knew that it wouldn't be quite as simple or as easy as all that: isolated as they were by the ATA- and grenade-fire savaging their MT cohorts - to say nothing of the deafening contributions of Kilo Company's fourth platoon - and outnumbered and cornered by _Kusa_ or not, the ghost AC's ahead weren't a jot less dangerous than they would have been uncontained. Kari's would-be kill juked to the right at the last millisecond - Surface _Above_ but the things were fast - and snapped off a retaliatory rifle grenade that passed altogether too close for comfort, before ducking back from the nasty tangle of angry hyphens converging on it from Wil's and Maggie's positions. But whether cold calculation or careless _mis_calculation, the maneuver left suddenly clear the firing lane between its partner and Maggie's MT, the river of plasma unleashed by the latter rushing down to carry away the former like stellar whitewater; the first _Bär_ rode as much as was tossed aside by the resultant blast, spinning gigantic head over titanic heels to crash back to the earth some meters to the south of its original course.

'Sucks to be you,' Wil muttered smugly, though which of the unfortunate _Bären_ he addressed, Kari wasn't sure; she personally envied neither of them their fate.

But if momentarily down, the remaining _Geist_ AC was far from out. Helped along by verniers of a size with most CMT _thrusters_ on the Blue Side of the Silent Line, it bounced to its feet with the impossible agility of a machine half its size and resumed fire, oblivious or indifferent to the armor plates that had been fused - and in several places seared away entirely - along the right side of its body; two such situated just above and just below the knee had evidently deformed in the supernova wash of charged particles and hyper-heated air, only to reharden a few hundred thousandths of a second later into an eye-wrenching work of abstract art that effectively hobbled the _Bär's_ right leg. Yet on it came, repurposing its boosters as an etheric crutch on the fly to compensate for the injury it scarcely paid any notice otherwise, and threw downrange a tight, semi-elliptical spread of rifle grenades that Kari threaded in no small measure through the fickle grace of Fortuna Belli; almost before the last charge had cleared the barrel the _Bär_ cycled to the launcher - enormous, like everything else about its mechanical 'person' - mounted behind its left shoulder, lashing out at her with a whipcrack pair of missiles faster than her eye could have ever hoped to follow at such close quarters. It was unadulterated instinct that jammed the virtual rudder to the right, snatching the initiative from the far slower conscious thought processes that would like as not have gotten her killed, had the decision been left in their hands - though as it was she still caught all save the worst that the proximity-fused warheads had to offer, and more than she heard she _felt_ titanium-ceramic skin rend as hundreds of jagged, metallic teeth sank into her Muscle Tracer's left flank; the breathy, pyric whisper of her own verniers skewed up into an anguished screech as one or more of the tiny maneuvering thrusters failed catastrophically, the asymmetric spike in acceleration pushing her just over the edge of a flat spin before her hands found slippery purchase on a semblance of control.

_You're one stubborn son of a bitch, aren't you_ she groused past gritted teeth, boots and gloves ablur over footpedals and control yoke; an eleventh hour - eleventh hour, fifty-ninth _minute_ - flash of inspiration put her remaining suite of reaction control apparatus through its paces in a lightning sequence that she less remembered than she simply knew, somehow, channeling the unanticipated delta-v into a fast lateral spiral that would wind around to her foe's left.

' "Impulse", blue line of sight,' she apprised the younger woman, whose twelve o'clock she would momentarily transit; into her transmission she poured all the equanimity that she could gather, as though her crazed, fishtailing corkscrew about the _Bär_ she had executed in precise accordance with a preformulated plan entirely of her own making. The exercise of effective command was nothing if not a work of theatre - almost more than that they knew, it was imperative that one's subordinates _saw_ the confidence of their commanding officer - and if it was obvious as the night skies overhead that she had never _actually_ intended to blow out a quarter of her verniers mid-battle, then by the equipoise she projected it would be just as obvious that all was well.

Kari's own ears perforce knew better, picking out of her voice rather more than she would have preferred of the tension that had wound her jaw muscles tight, but at comm's other end it had seemingly passed muster. 'Roger, "K-T",' Maggie replied calmly - 'going clockwise.' Playing off of her lieutenant's improvised combat maneuver she whipped her Muscle Tracer into a power-slide in the opposite direction, circling the _Bär_ like the second hand of an ancient analog clock. Improbably responsive as the great machine was it had its limits, and the simultaneous repulse of attack from three obliquely-angled vectors plainly lay somewhere beyond them - 'Iscariot', Kari observed with the suggestion of a smirk, it was not.

She jerked her head away from the HFD a split-second too slowly in advance of the ghost AC's fusion-powered answer to the Viking funeral, the sunfire glare painful even through the display filters and her polarizing visor; she shook her head, working her eyes through a rapid series of blinks to clear them of a translucent haze that swam with surreal, inverse shades of porphyry and heather, and sought out Jake and the Raven to take quick account of their progress once she could see ag-

' "Iscariot", contact on your six!' Kari had redlined her throttle before she understood that her hands were moving, letting slip a short grunt as Newton's laws of motion converged on her body in punishing concert. To the featureless, nuclear _blank_ that the _Bär_ had seared into the battlefield, color and detail had returned gradually, restoring the tactical mosaic just as it had been seconds before - save for the addition of a third _Geist_ AC, blazing along a direct-intercept course for the AC-MT pair like a spark down a quick-burn fuse. She supposed, irrelevantly, that in greatest likelihood it had passed by _Kusa_ unnoticed while they saw to the other - perhaps, even, that the original _Bären_ had been sacrificed to that very end. But at that particular moment she couldn't possibly - _physically_ - have summoned less concern or interest for whatever Surface-forsaken corner of the combat zone had spawned the thing, because, very simply, she would never make it in time.

_Shit. Shit!_

'Hold tight, "Iscariot", we're en route.' But it didn't matter. They were five - three now, for all intents and practical purposes - distributed across tens or dozens or hundreds, the laughably, vanishingly small denominator of a ludicrously improper fraction whose remainder they could never fully balance, no matter how fine, inventive, or relentless their division. They had borrowed heavily against every available repository of skill, luck, and divine munificence to prop up that tottering quotient, accruing stochastic interest at usurous rates in hopes of bringing the battle for the command hub to a successful conclusion before the debt came due - but Tychë had ever been the most capricious of the soldier's creditors, every bit as inclined to take away as to give; Windfall and Misfortune alike answered to her alone, twin hounds that no propulsive engine of mortal make could possibly outrun.

Fleet though they were, the Muscle Tracers of MTT _Kusanagi_ had finally been pushed just a hair too far, asked to be in one too many places simultaneously to maintain utible combat efficiency in all, and even as Kari took aim on the third _B__ä__r_ for a desperately long-range shot she knew she had lost the race against probability. The center of her heads-forward-display was abruptly banded in hellish reds and yellows, and in the virtual distance Jake, 'Iscariot', and the _Geist_ AC disappeared behind a wall of fire.

**E****DZARD**** B****AHR**

Five hundred meters above the battlefield, Edzard gave characteristically unrestrained voice to a cry of exultation.

'How 'bout _them_ apples, you _Geist_ motherfucker!' he cheered, snapping his _Talisman_ about in a victory roll as he overflew at a cool seven hundred kilometers per hour the trail of flame he'd blazed. He'd had only seconds to make heads or tails either one of the curious scene below, and truth be told he still wasn't altogether sure he'd assembled the pertinent details correctly - although if that Armored Core really _was_ dragging that MT toward 413 Forward, as their position and orientation suggested, then he imagined one or the other of them would have a hell of a story to tell - but that the _B__är_ closing on their position had something less than their very best interests at heart had been abundantly clear, and Edzard had been only too happy to return the sentiment on their behalf; the spread of seventy millimeter 'Hepta' rockets that had sewn the _Geist_ AC into the desert floor he'd found remarkably gratifying. 'See you in hell, asshole - see you in motherfucking hell.'

'Bet he'll feel _that_ one in morning,' Anna observed from off his right wing, her words plainly formed around a satisfied smirk; Edzard's shoulders rolled through a careless shrug.

'Should've thought of that before he decided to pick a fight in Gal's AOR.'

'For what it's worth, sir, he looks pretty contrite now.'

Someone snickered over the tactical channel, and Edzard allowed an amused snort. 'Point,' he conceded, grinning in fair approximation of the expression he could practically hear in his exec's own voice; then he was all business. 'But if they didn't know we were coming before,' he went on, addressing the squadron as a whole, 'they know we're here now - free ride's over.' He threw a frown over his shoulder at the besieged command hub, indulging the futile wish that he'd been able to raise Lieutenant Colonel Tiering...but ultimately there was nothing to be done for it; his helmet swiveled back and forth, shaking the thought away.

'So far Four-Thirteen's been non-responsive,' he informed his Ground Pounders, 'but they're obviously still alive and kicking down there.' Somewhere behind and below, one of the Surface-knew-how-many _B__ä__ren_ there were aprowl died one species or another of spectacular death, the thermonuclear sunrise underscoring Bahr's point. 'Flight leaders, it's a good bet Gus knocked out their comm arrays early on - coördinate as best you can with the groundside forces in your sectors.

'Otherwise, same drill as last time - five-flight plays center field, nine-flight heads up north; one-flight and I'll hang out down south, keep things buttoned up there.' He paused, then, and for the thousandth time he drew a silent, steeling breath, bracing himself for what must inevitably follow.

His pilots were some of the best. They weren't _the_ best, of course - Lieutenant Colonel Breighe and her Partisans weren't likely to be toppled from the summit of _that_ particular hill anytime soon, if ever - but within the realm of mortal pilots, at least, they were the best that he, Ben Martin, and their respective XO's knew how to make them, their skills forged and tempered and honed to a diamond edge that a surgeon might have coveted. And to the unalloyed success of their training their joint combat record bore eloquent witness, for between the lines of impersonal statistics had been written the account of nothing if not twenty-four of the most dangerous men and women - twenty-four of the most dangerous _things_ - to ever take to the Earthly skies.

But deep down, part of Edzard hated leading them into battle - in fact, dreaded it. There wasn't a single Ground Pounder or Jack of All Trades - the distinction between the two had blurred as near to invisibility as made no difference - there wasn't a single one of his pilots for whom he wouldn't gladly fly and fight his way to the farthest, dimmest corners of _Geistland_, braving with neither balk nor blanch whatever nameless malice slumbered across the Silent Line if it would keep them from harm...yet to ask the same of them struck within a faint shade of more than he could bear. For all the emotional locks and keys under which he kept his fears, for all the detachment that he knew he was expected to maintain, that his pilots might die carrying out his orders - might die _because_ of the orders that he had issued - flatly terrified him, and if he would (possibly) admit as much only to Martin or Anna, there it was all the same. He supposed, after all was toted up and tallied, that it made him a poor officer - perhaps, even, that it meant he had ultimately failed in his duties - but they had all carried one another much too far and through far too much to be anything but family.

So for the thousandth time he drew a silent, steeling breath, bracing himself for what must inevitably follow - because, his job though it was to command, to eventually cut his pilots loose and commend them to their training and to the quicksilver favor of Fortuna Belli...even after all these years it had never gotten any easier.

'Keep your wings clean and watch your sixes,' he advised finally, burying - also for the thousandth time - his reservations as far down as they would go, 'and look out for your wingmates.' Which, of course, they would.

'Gropos break on my mark... Mark.'

_Surface protect you._

Like a cable fraying in slow motion the twelve fighters of MVFA-6 peeled away by flight groups, each four-plane formation banking or looping through a widely differential vector that would keep it clear of the other two and deposit them somewhere above their assigned quarter. From the center Edzard led one-flight up and over into a basic but serviceable immelman turn, in one fluid maneuver both shedding unwanted velocity and gaining altitude, as well as smoothly reversing their heading; throttle, air speed, height above ground level, angle of attack, and the accretion of g-forces he monitored with no more than half an eye, the pilot's training that experience had long since etched deep as instinct into his bones effortlessly seeking out the five-way balance between them. Righting his _Talisman_ with a snappy half-roll as his climb plateaued, he took fast stock of the firefight that once more lay below and before him, sifting through the tactical chaff in search of more relevant wheat.

At first pass the battle zone seemed a sink of hopeless disorder, with little distinguishable beyond the rectilinear gray mass of 413 Forward itself as strobe-lit by magnesium rabbit trails, endless showers of rocket motor sparks, and the great walls of flame thrown up along the 'set-ward ramparts; amidst the cloying pall of smoke that had choked every major battlefield since the general introduction, centuries gone and more, of gunpowder to organized warfare, light bent and twisted crazily, rebounding through a restless obstacle course of hydrocarbon motes to cast rorschach pools of shadow in every direction. Yet with the disciplined evolutions of that selfsame battlefield, in its most modern iteration, Edzard had been no few years conversant, and a second look was sufficient to tease the orchestrating logic out from behind the putative chaos. Scarlet fire pervaded like hard, prismatic scatter the command hub's northern and southern flanks, in the latter arena marking out the Armored Core Team - whoever they were - to whose safeguard his flight group would presently attend; while Edzard's familiarity with CMT tactics in their particulars would only ever have been termed 'passing', he felt a reasonable confidence in his deduction, from their evident firing patterns and the maneuvers implied thereby, that the three Muscle Tracers still in the fight - or the four; he hadn't had the time to make a thorough headcount - had assumed some manner of defensive posture, running interference to screen the Raven's withdrawal with their downed comrade in tow.

He felt a reasonable confidence in his deduction, and something not far short of amazement. _Wonder they haven't been shot to pieces yet._ How long they'd been at it, Edzard couldn't say - it might have been seconds or hours, for all of him - but that so few had managed to stand their ground at all against that press, opposite a force that had every making of the single hardest _Geist_ drive on any one point on the 'Line, he accounted no inconsiderable feat. _Gotta be KiSec._ Pint-sized as they were - although come to think of it, Edzard had never actually seen a 'pint', or even learned what they were; his assumptions had always lain in the vicinity of some variety or other of pre-Destruction housepet, obviously small to go by the latter-day expression, but he'd never come across any sort of photo or historical reference to the things - however pint-like their size, it was a matter of little-disputed fact that, man for man and woman for woman, the Security Forces were the most dangerous military organization either side of the Surface, whose pilots ate long odds for breakfast and asked for seconds. _And have Rin Unin's own fucking luck._ Edzard had seen no corporate insignia on the south-stationed Muscle Tracers as he rocketed overhead the first time, nor could he very likely have made out any such moving at several hundred kilometers per hour in the dark, but their continued survival was all the identifier of which he had any need: none but a Kisaragi force could have stood _that_ storm, and smart money said they'd probably carried the Raven's cocky ass too - and that without the benefit of close air support, no less.

_Until now._ With a predatory grin that would have done a wolf pack credit, if any still hunted in some far-flung corner of the world not yet rediscovered, Edzard dropped his targeting reticle over the lead MT of the _Geist_ line still advancing on 413's own Muscle Tracer Team, his HFD's w-shaped whiskey mark blinking to a ring sight as he thumbed his weapon selector from rockets to guns. 'One-flight, looks like Gus doesn't know how to take "no" for an answer - pick your targets and fire for effect, and see to it he learns the error of his ways.'

'Roger that, sir,' Anna acknowledged for all of them, 'chastising now.'

From the undercarriages of the flight group's four _Talismans_, eight high-slung, twenty-seven millimeter cannons spat pallid orange flame, setting loose a depleted uranium deluge that soaked the ghost machines to the alloy bone. Again and again and again, seventy times every second, the chemical potential energy of high-grade propellant flashed to raw kinetic, translating through each three hundred gram, twenty-seven-by-one-hundred-forty-nine millimeter projectile to disperse with armor-piercing force at the point of impact; whether met by hardened plate or simple metal paneling, the encounter was productive without variance of the same end result, the one withstanding no better than the other the dramatic demonstration of the principle, enshrined so many centuries prior within the First Law of Thermodynamics, of the conservation of energy. At the task for which it had been purpose-designed and -built, as _Geist_ forces had so often learned to their sorrow, the Aught-Nine knew no peer, and by every indication the present contest would prove the rule rather than the exception: beneath the wrath that one-flight poured down upon the land, opposing Muscle Tracers simply...dissolved...dust, fire, and titanium-ceramic debris falling across them like a funeral shroud from which they never again emerged.

The flight group broke in staggered pairs as it neared the enemy lines it had so forcefully discouraged, Edzard hanging back to keep watch with Anna lest the _Geister_ to the rear of their kill zone try to slip a missile up someone's tailpipe while they weren't looking. As tacticians went Gus had never been much acquainted with creativity, or given to thought all that far outside the box in which most of his decisions at the small-unit level fit comfortably, but he did have a nasty way of springing still nastier surprises just when one felt sure they'd catalogued the full contents of his bag of tricks, and it would be just like him to-

And there they were, rockets screaming out of the smog bank that for the moment hid forward enemy lines - the first attempt at return fire since the Ground Pounders' explosive entrance. 'One-flight Bravo,' Edzard began, 'go evas-' But no sooner had the ghost MT's opened fire than they were silenced - forever, he was sure - by what was left of the KiSec Team below, angry rubescence stuttering madly out of the night to land home with an apparent accuracy that he wouldn't have believed attainable, given the disorienting fluctuations in visibility. The hash of light and dark that weapons fire made of any battlefield after sunset was nothing if not unnavigable for the average human eye, nor were most IR sensor suites very much better than useless amidst the inundation of waste heat inherent to any protracted continuance of politics by other means - stone's throw from preposterous though it was, to score the kills they evidently had the MT pilots down there would have had to interpolate whatever mayfly rocket trails they might have spotted, backtracking the warheads to their best-guess point of origin and adjusting their suppressive fire concordantly.

Which, of course, in the hands of most anyone else Blue-side would have taken sufficient liberties with the dictionary to reorganize 'long shot' and 'desperation' as adjacent entries - but then, they _were_ Kisaragi pilots; Caralaine's CI's were possessed of an altogether eerie facility for the reinterpretation of 'impossibly' slim odds as circumstances that were merely less than ideal.

Good-natured chagrin pushed Edzard's mouth into a rueful smile. 'Bravo, belay my last,' he amended - 'guess someone's still on their game down there.' Not that KiSec was ever anything but. 'Swing down south and on back around - "x" marks the spot.'

One-flight's second half acknowledged with double comm clicks so close on top of one another they might as well have been the same transmission, 'Lifetaker' and 'Heartbreaker' reversing and elongating their horizontal bank - which would have brought them back to their original course - into a lopsided 's' that instead carried them out beyond the farthest edge of the _Geist_ wing, looping around to set up on a strafing run that would intersect with Edzard's own. To meet them he - and Anna with him - dipped left into a low-g yo-yo, in essence a tight-wheeling turn wedded to a more or less shallow dive meant to trade altitude for speed before bouncing them back up to their previous height and heading, and thereby permissive of either the increase or the preservation, depending upon its execution, of forward velocity through a course-change normally made only at the expense of the same. As per his order, one-flight's alpha and bravo elements would this time strike at the ghost flank along separate, 'set-ward-'rise-ward and north-south axes of attack - an eminently basic tactic that might have been laughable for its simplicity were it productive of less bounteous dividends, for above and beyond the immanent challenge it presented of countering hostile movements along multiple vectors, the incident strain on morale could and not infrequently did break enemy units outright. That _Geist_ forces themselves had never been seen to do any such thing, their only dispositions observed thus far consisting in variations of frontal assaults and strategic withdrawals, was ultimately of small account - the _will_ to fight, as a noted, pre-Destruction military theorist had once observed, meant little or less without the accompanying _means_.

Reaching optimal weapons range just ahead of Anna and Edzard, 'Lifetaker' and 'Heartbreaker' lit into the _Geister_ to the sound - or to what might easily have _passed_ for the sound - of every sheet in Mirage's capital city of Marcau rending from end to end, the discharge of both pilots' Harbinger cannons slotted cleanly into the same hundredth of a second with room to spare. Outside the cockpit, any one of the Ground Pounders or Jacks of All Trade would have testified with an exasperated groan to the naked loathing with which Lieutenants Cal Merrick and Sarah Scheldt regarded one another, the two bickering so vociferously and with such frequency that Edzard wasn't sure whether they would murder or bed one another first - but within, 'Lifetaker' and 'Heartbreaker' were very possibly the most finely-tuned offensive system he had ever seen outside of the Partisans themselves, flying with a synchrony close on to perfect. How exactly so schizophrenic a partition between their relationships might have obtained, Edzard couldn't have said - but so long as it redounded to the same aerial wizardry that had scored the squadron's only two 'kills' against the Partisans in that year's INTERCOR, he couldn't have cared less. Weaving a convoluted rat's nest of contrails around one another that he was certain only they understood, 'Lifetaker' and 'Heartbreaker' spiraled, jinked, and barrel-rolled their way through a cannon run dizzying as a ballet and inexorable as the tide, the _Geist_ ranks splitting ever further toward visible incohesion along the fault lines laid open by the volume and precision of their fire, until-

Bare seconds behind, from the 'set-ward sky Anna and Edzard fell like thunderbolts.

Harbingers hissed and Hepta's shrieked, then air-to-ground missiles roared and unguided bombs whistled, both pilots, after so many hours flown on one another's wings, falling into their mutual rhythm as easily as tumbling from the proverbial log. Their performance in concert had never quite attained to the same inhuman, almost mechanistic _integration_ that Cal and Sarah had achieved - nor would it, if such were dependent upon their manic-depressive antipathy; more than just his second in command, his spitfire exec Edzard accounted a close friend as well - but so too had the implacable career of Alexander's conquests 'fallen short' only of the organizational and administrative genius with which Phillip had transformed a rustic backwater on the Hellenic periphery into the future mistress, however brief would prove her supremacy, of the Mediterranean and western Asia: whether or not they could match the vertiginous heights to which 'Lifetaker' and 'Heartbreaker' had raised the bar, together Anna and Edzard might easily have been taken for the living, breathing definitions of 'force to be reckoned with'. In pass after pass they desolated the ghost ranks, swirling through attack patterns and evasive maneuvers fit to tie the eye in knots until, wedged between the cyclone before them and the hurricane at their flank, the _Geist_ force's only remaining line of retreat lay in the hereafter.

The battle for 413 Forward was over. Whatever the knife edge on which victory had teetered, the Ground Pounders' advent had less shifted than thrown the balance point to its furthest limits Blue-side, perhaps committing the writing to the figurative wall even with the first rockets loosed from Edzard's _Talisman_; irrespective of the _Geist_ command element's understanding of its own disposition, its every tactical option now lay in an irrecoverable litter strewn across the minutes and hours that lay behind. To the defenders it remained only to sweep the field clean of what opposition persisted, to which task they set with cacophanous gusto as the unidentified Raven hauled his MT charge into the protective shadow of the hub's outer walls, ATA missiles, one hundred fifteen millimeter shells, grenades, twenty-seven millimeter cannonfire, and plasma the color of bloody sunset flooding the 'rise-ward half of the DFP.

Oh yes, the Raven. The battle for 413 Forward had ended in fact if not name, its final outcome as good as set down in whatever books might assay the chronicle of the _Geisteskrieg_ in the years and decades thence - but not before the mercenary had shown Edzard the broadest, fullest depths of his misassumption.

The Armored Core and her pilot he had dismissed with a second thought and little more, and that second only for the curiosity of the spectacle they offered with a KiSec Muscle Tracer under arm. He had always bought into the myth, propounded with snide certitude throughout military and paramilitary circles, of the overrated 'tracer jock, the jumped-up showboater who was all posture and no punch, and interested only in strutting and preening for the media outlets that still - _still_, even after the fucking _debris field_ that Unin had left in his wake - so adored them; too drunk on their own mythos to stake their overblown reputations on any save the engagement skewed most absurdly in their favor, they flitted in and out of intercorporate conflicts according only to their own whimsy, never forced to endure the privation and hardship of protracted war for a legitimate company cause. In his hasty inventory of the battlefield Edzard had been thus content to write the Raven off as empty ornamentation, his reasonable presumption that the Kisaragi pilots posted to 413 had simply drawn the short straw and been left to do the heavy lifting themselves, while the wasted contract with whom they'd been saddled in the meantime busied himself playacting the soldier of fortune.

But he'd been wrong - Surface _Above_ but he'd been wrong.

The encounter he had seen only in extended, moving snapshots, caught a few seconds at a time as he and Anna slipped depleted uranium slugs and precision guided munitions between the _Geist_ force's clumsy attempts at counter fire - but if in old age his every other memory fell by the wayside, that sight he would remember with the last breath that he drew: a lone Armored Core, immovable and undaunted as the mountains, barring the way with a blade forged from the summer skies themselves...

Somewhere along the line, even as their larger offensive stalled out around them, no fewer than three _B__ä__ren_ had won free of the kinetic and directed energy cordon that one-flight and the KiSec Muscle Tracer Team had thrown across the command hub's southern flank, trailed by a company-strength retinue of their smaller reverse-jointed brethren. Much too late Edzard had spotted them, from the farthest side of the engagement zone and at the vertex of a half-loop that had both pointed him in the wrong direction and cost him a third of his airspeed, leaving him no immediate recourse but a corrective maneuver he could never execute in time, and an especially pungent curse he'd heard once from his father after he was thought long since abed; his final glimpse of the Raven, as he jammed the control stick as far into his right hip as it would go to heel the immelman back over and down into a split-s, had in truth been of his Armored Core, standing squarely astride the _Geist_ detachment's line of advance with blade alight as if to meet them head-on - a futile last act of lunatic defiance, Edzard might have thought, but for her meditative calm and the aura of terrifying, absolute _assurance_ that she projected. How that might be, how the Raven could have possibly expected to survive, he hadn't known, and as his left wing had eclipsed the scene of impendent slaughter he could only loose a still more vile oath for whatever oversight of his had let the _Geister_ past. He should have been faster, the Surface forsake him, more alert - he should have been quicker to realize just how hot things were on the southern wing and pull an extra fighter from one of his other flight groups to compensate; because of him, two more pilots who didn't need to were going t-

But when next the Raven's part of the field had come into view, the Armored Core was gone; Edzard had blinked once, perplexity momentarily washing out anger and self-recrimination. _What the f-?_ And then, he had found her - or rather, he had found a howling sapphire gale, two hundred meters downrange. To wing over and drop into a split-s - in effect an immelman inverted, meant instead to exchange _altitude_ for_ speed_ as one reversed course - had required fewer seconds than the name of the maneuver would have taken to set down in ink, but in that span the Armored Core had not only charged her attackers, but somehow closed the distance as though she'd not even bothered with the intervening space.

Suddenly the _Geist_ formation had been set ablaze with a hard blue light from within, and wherever the AC had moved, the ghost machines nearest her...died. Cobalt fanned and azure billowed, her blade parting silicon flesh and steel bone as easily as it clove the tortured night air that boiled over with raw plasma exhaust - and abruptly, incomprehensibly, it was the Geister who found themselves in mortal peril rather than the Raven, the figurative tables less turned than smashed to flinders by the gray-blue, bipedal thunderstorm that had broken in their midst. The uninitiated observer might have been forgiven their assumption that the KiSec Muscle Tracer, lying still as a headstone well behind the Raven, had simply been abandoned to such lot as the Fates saw fit to spin out, no more than the most recent casualty of the decidedly mercenary sense of self-preservation for which the Order was justly infamous...but to the more discerning eye the outcome laid incontrovertibly bare the falsity of the hypothesis: strain as they might against the line that the Armored Core had drawn in the sand between them and the Kisaragi MT, not a one of the _Geister_ lived to set foot across it.

At a warning tone from his ESM suite Edzard had thrown his _Talisman_ into an evasive bank-and-roll that stopped just shy of septupling his weight, obscuring the fighter's radar-return footprint beneath a liberal dusting of chaff as he spiraled well off of his original vector, but once he'd come around and caught sight of the Raven again, some seconds later, _Geist_ numbers in the merc's immediate neighborhood had - somehow - dropped by a figure uncomfortably close to half. He'd had time only to mark the two remaining _B__ä__ren_ angling in on the Armored Core from opposite directions before he and Anna - back on his wing after rebounding from the deck - loosed a Surface-jarring retaliatory strike on the enemy Muscle Tracers whose missilefire they had ducked, but by the time that they'd pulled out of their shallow attack dive and Edzard had spotted the Raven once more-

The Armored Core had stood alone.

In almost perfect visual echo of her earlier stance, for long moments she had simply stood at the heart of the carnage she had authored, as though daring - _welcoming_ - the _Geister_ to make another disastrous essay of _her_ Muscle Tracer's destruction: immovable and undaunted as the mountains, barring the way with a blade forged from the summer skies themselves...

With an uneasy sensation like ice condensing in his stomach, Edzard had suddenly found himself in mind of the story he'd once read as a boy of an ancient city-state and its greatest heroine, who time and time again had thrown back its foes from the city walls like the surf from a granite promontory. Not in three decades and more had the helter-skelter transpirations of a career officer's life occasioned the old tale's recall, but if its particulars had in largest part been subsumed by the intervening years, then one line, at least, he remembered still, as plainly as though the words had been committed to paper by his own hand.

_None shall pass._

Even now, circling low and slow to keep an eye on the Raven while five- and nine-flights - along with 'Lifetaker' and 'Heartbreaker' - stamped out the last embers of resistance to the north, Edzard felt his shoulder blades twitch with a suppressed shiver. Absorbed though she was in the outwardly mundane business (for all the unorthodoxy of the equipment in use) of towing a damaged Muscle Tracer in for field repairs, if such were possible then the Armored Core had taken on almost a _deadlier_ aspect in the performance of that simple task than she had in her dismemberment - jaw-dropping just for a start - of the erstwhile _Geist_ assault on her MT ward, for she betrayed no hint of the raw destructive potential that he knew lurked just beneath that placid exterior.

But...no, on second thought that wasn't quite right either, was it; Edzard frowned, studying the scene below while he kept half an ear to squadron comms. There was nothing in the Armored Core's movements of the mercenary's typical vainglory, it was true, no trace in the Raven's stick personality of swagger or conceit - but in the lithe economy with which the AC moved, with which she discharged even the least of her duties, there was to be read a far simpler and infinitely more chilling truth.

_She's a predator._

Neither subtle nor obvious either one, it was, rather, understated - but looking on that flawless synthesis of _S__ö__ldner und Maschine_ with new eyes as Edzard was, that aura of all-encompassing, absolute _competence_, utter and complete, was unmistakable. _No sheep in wolf's clothing, that one._

On something of a lark he raised his exec - pacing him, as ever, like a second shadow from precisely fifty meters off his right wing. 'What do you make of our fine-feathered friend down there, "Sparks"?' he asked of Anna, curious to hear her own read on the man.

The major gave a delicate snort. 'Candidly, sir? Suffice it to say I'm damned glad I'm not Gus right about now - I get a serious "don't-fuck-with-me" vibe from that one.'

Edzard gave a laugh of commiseration. 'Roger that,' he agreed - 'definitely a better day to be Blue-side.' But with Armored Core and Muscle Tracer now safely inside 413's walls, his attention most properly belonged elsewhere; his final orbit of the command hub's southern end he drew out into a loose, easy spiral, liesurely swinging back around to a northerly heading. 'Five, Nine - status?'

'Arses kicked and names duly taken, sir,' Ground Pounder Five - 'Trafalgar' - reported crisply, nary a sign, as never there was, of his verbal levity in his cultured, even diction. Rattling around in dim outline at the back of Edzard's memory was some creaky old stereotype or other of a dry sense of humor and equally sere delivery, and if he'd only ever met a tiny fistful of the man's people, then in Captain Graham Ellington it seemed an _echo_, at least, had survived the Great Destruction and the Kingdom's extinction.

But in the sentiment of her squadronmate's assessment, if not in the informality of its delivery, Ground Pounder Nine evidently shared. 'Not much left to do but put it in writing, sir,' Lela Garrett - 'Twilight' - concurred. 'Looks like the battle had ground down to something of a stalemate before we arrived on-scene, as nearly as I can figure it, and we were probably the deciding factor.' Edzard nodded to himself in absent satisfaction; he'd taken away a similar impression of the contest, but he trusted Lela's intuition a good deal farther than he did his own - his other captain had always boasted an unaccountably firm grasp of conventional ground warfare. 'Unless there's another _Geist_ army standing to nearby, the hub should be secure for the time being.'

Anna sniffed drily. 'Best not tempt fate, "Twilight".'

From Lela's parking orbit a kilometer or two northward, there came the sound of a rare chuckle over the comm. 'Point, "Sparks".' Then she slipped back into her more wonted reservation. ' "Cyclone", recommend we push 'rise-ward to pick off stragglers while we have the momentum and opportunity, sir - before the _Geister_'ve had the chance to reorganize.'

For some few seconds the line crackled softly as Edzard considered the Ground Pounders' options, his cockpit filled only with the steady, reassuring thrum of his _Talisman's_ Huffton Electric turbofans and the variegated percussion of now-sporadic mop-up fire groundside. He was, in point of fact, sorely tempted to carry the fight 'rise-ward as per Lela's suggestion and run down what ghost survivors they could, as every _Geist_ casualty inflicted now would strain that much further the seemingly limitless reserves on which the _Geisteswehr_ could apparently call - but his were, in the end, more immediate responsibilities.

'Nothing I'd like more, Nine,' he told the flight leader, 'but that's a negative - we need to make sure Too Cold Actual's got his house in order first.'

'Understood, sir - permission to set up shop upstairs?'

'All yours, Nine.' At his go-ahead Lela's _Talisman_ nosed up into a shallow, spiraling ascent, the other three Aught-Nines of her flight group dropping into train behind to follow her up to higher altitude; holding a wide observational orbit at around two thousand meters, between the composited sensor returns from the four of them - all fed via tight-band transmission into their flight leader's own avionics suite - and Lela's almost intuitive feel for the tactical contours of the battlefield they would be able to keep reasonably close watch over the goings-on in the command hub's vicinity.

Of course, for all the flexibility that Hughes-Archer had been able to stuff into the Chancewelle fighter's combined-function radar array, never in its designers' most improbable dreams had it been intended to track and manage the myriad assets populating even a modestly-sized engagement - yet it was, for the foreseeable future and most likely well beyond, about the best of the marginal compromises for which any MARSAF squadron could hope. While for the past half-decade and more Edzard had lobbied persistently - _stridently_, as some of his superiors might have had it - for a dedicated, airborne command and control platform, to a one the hands that held Mirage's purse strings were paired with a set of selectively deaf ears, and at all events were far more favorably disposed toward the Surface reclamation initiatives that the company had championed for the preceding fourteen years.

As Edzard dipped his left wing into a ten-degree bank, letting the natural lift of the _Talisman_ nudge him through a gentle circuit of 413's airspace while Anna made another attempt to raise someone groundside, he scowled blackly for the credit-wise, cause-foolish myopia of the CFO - a civilian, _naturally_ - who held the company's budget in thrall. For some reason or other that he'd never quite pinned down, Kienan Marscher seemed to have assumed almost _personal_ responsibility for the redevelopment of the Surface since his appointment to Mirage's highest financial office, ransacking the fiscal larders quarter after quarter for every 'spare' credit that he could pare from such 'overgrown' spending items as paramilitary operations or associated research and development - nevermind the fact that every last square kilometer they'd wrested from the post-Destruction wilds of _Neue_ would be drowned in blood and fire if the 'Line ever broke, and the wreck of mankind's incipient (re)civilization swept into the 'set-ward sea like so much flotsam.

Edzard swallowed a curse that technically had no place on the open channel Anna was trying to establish with the command hub, mute frustration cording the muscles along his jaw line. He'd very calmly, very _reasonably_ explained as much in a rare interview with Marissa Gantz, if ultimately to no evident avail - although in his defense, it wasn't _his_ fault that Mirage's Chief Security Officer insisted on confounding common sense with 'insubordination'; damned civilians apparently wouldn't know obvious if it kicked them in the Surface-forsaken ass. But whatever the periodic shortcomings of Mirage leadership, the long and the short of it was that, unless or until Edzard could develop and field a new aircraft out of pocket, the concept would no more than languish on the verbal drawing board of wardroom and commissary banter.

He sniffed heavily, head and shoulders bouncing once in dark amusement. That wasn't to banish the prospect to the realm of the impossible in its _entirety_...if either his pay or his lifespan happened to dectuple within arm's length of the present - but unless the war took a sudden turn for the soluble by some point on the same approximate timetable, the question was irrelevant.

All traces of humor - gallows or otherwise - fell out of his hard-set features, dropping close behind his gaze to the desertscape below as he took sober stock of the realities that underlay their 'victory'. Oh, the frontier forces' claim to it could be staked out legitimately enough, and as surely as the planet's rotation gently shepherded the night along behind the day, the Second Battle of 413 Forward _would_, in fact, be tallied as a Blue Side success - but only just, and even that, Edzard was positive, thanks only to the pure-distilled _wherewithal_ that the KiSec-Raven team had evidently had on tap. _But what about the next time?_ Or the time after that? How much closer could a near-miss possibly shave before it was no longer a 'miss' at all?

How many more close calls, Edzard wondered, could they amass before the entire, precariously-balanced lot of them at last and with nigh atomic violence simply _discohered_ and they began losing critical positions on the 'Line?

The throttle column creaked in protest beneath a fist vising shut in frustration, polymer and rubber fittings torquing against their metal sett- No, strike that - frustration wasn't even in it, anymore. Anger was a fair sight nearer the mark, but more even than he was angry Edzard was afraid - edging on outright petrifaction, in truth.

For, in sum total the _Geisteskrieg_ was little so much as a zero-sum game writ continental, a vast, protracted holding action in which the frontier forces' greatest 'triumphs', for all the lives laid down and all the resources committed, each sifted out with alarming uniformity as a transitory respite that held only the promise of greater struggles to come. Case in depressing point, this most recent fight for 413 Forward: in the very teeth of reason or chance, they had stood sure and held the 'Line - but to...what end, exactly? Only to repeat the same exercise in a week's time, or a month's? Edzard would throw in the proverbial towel sometime after they prised his cold, dead hands from his _Talisman's_ control stick and throttle column - but his innate obduracy, for all that, had never blinded him to a losing battle when he saw one.

Colonel Dell Harpender, one of the canniest of war's pupils whom the post-Destruction world had yet known - and a KiSec veteran, unsurprisingly - had very famously summarized _Ebb and Flow_, his comprehensive and still authoritative treatise on strategic initiative and momentum, with the maxim 'if you're not winning, you're losing' - in practical effect the observation that, on a long enough timeline, simple want of progress and outright defeat were indistinguishable, ultimately converging at the same disastrous outcome. That Colonel Opnoff's house-of-cards coaltion had through two bloody years held both itself and the frontier intact was nothing if not the gift of an omnibenevolent Surface - but absent a follow-up offensive push, and that damned soon, in the end his Consolidation of the Silent Line would come to whatever might lie between catastrophe and nothing.

But any such transition to a more proactive footing was contingent, first, upon rather more than the tangled skein of wild-ass guesses informing their current picture of _Geistland_ and its internal makeup, which meant... Edzard's fist flexed testily on the control stick. Which _meant_, in most concise terms, that unless the dead weight lurching about in a rude imitation of corporate and government intelligence services got off its collective ass and gave the frontier forces something actionable, it wouldn't matter if he had one lifetime or a dozen to finance the warning and control aircraft he wanted - the war would be over before the ink on the damned thing's blueprints had even had the chance to dry.

**B****RYAS**** T****OANE**

For long moments, no one spoke. To Bryas' right, Major Harrison's gaze roved back and forth and back again over the small mountain range of file folders that rose above the plotting table between them, the senior officer - senior, that was to say, by the measure of her _de facto_ position and the breadth and depth both of the responsibilites attendant thereon, if not strictly by her otherwise mid-level rank - the senior officer peering thoughtfully through the manila and off-white window into the analyst's abstract, theoretical world that, consisting in Facts and Numbers in their purest essence and governed solely by the conceptual physics of Consequence, so resembled the metaphysical realm of Plato's Forms; Bryas could all but watch implications ramify before the woman's sea-blue eyes, the fleet mind behind them haring down causal trails with a whirlwind celerity that he knew from personal experience his own was hopelessly ill-equipped to pace. A thumb absently flicked her dataslate's stylus in and out of its cylindrical housing, either keeping tempo with some rhythm only she could hear, or supplying her inability to pace while seated with an approximate manual analog.

Directly across the table, Tal Fossman and his female cohort - one Second Lieutenant Elizabeth Katze, Bryas had learned from their truncated round of introductions - kept glancing between the veritable library of reference materials he'd assembled and one another, sharing looks that he supposed couldn't be anything _but_ significant in view of the theoretical framework he'd just proposed to erect on the site of the former. On temporarily detached duty from someplace or other MidSEC - or 'CentSEC', as a few officers with starchier collars insisted that it be called - Katze had really been on hand only by chance, liaising with Fossman as part of an inter-Sector project tasked with the development, evaluation, and eventual frontline implementation of intrusion and counter-intrusion software applications, but at Bryas' urging had been granted Major Harrison's permission to remain; whatever brand of unintentional it may have been besides, the presence of a second Defense Force officer specifically versed in the neutralization and exploitation of hostile computer systems was...timely. _Mom always did say the Surface worked in mysterious ways..._

Captain Kim Averies rounded out their presently subdued group on Bryas' left, the only other person in the room that he had - with Major Harrison's initially bemused assent - otherwise cleared and subsequently sealed. His most immediate superior in a branch of service whose first lieutenants had, literally as well as figuratively, almost all 'made captain' long since, the senior analyst - 'senior', as was the major, only in comparative terms - who headed his section he had asked to the S-2 corral in nearly the same breath he had used to summon Major Harrison herself; a moderate transgression, in technical truth, of the martial protocols in accordance with which they had been taught to comport themselves - it was expected of Soldiers that they should go _through_ their CO's, rather than rudely shoulder them aside for a running jump at the next link up the chain of command - today, now, it had also been thrown to the distal side of irrelevance. _Along with about nine-tenths of everything we thought we knew about Gus..._ Though to her credit Captain Averies had never been an especially hard-nosed officer, so far as Bryas' knowledge of the woman carried him, and in any case she knew him well enough to assume that he wouldn't have convened the five of them to no purpose: far from put out to find that _her_ commanding officer had, for reasons unknown, arrived ahead of her, she had in greater part been curious to learn what might have warranted the major's inclusion as well as her own...

...and, then, been promptly stunned into incredulous, blindsided silence.

In all likelihood they might each have stared into the analytical depths for some hours longer, adrift on the stormy swells of their own musings as they came to uneasy terms with the strategic picture as Bryas had suggested it be redrawn, had Major Harrison not at last set them back on course; with an authoritative _snap_ she palmed the stylus home and laid the dataslate deliberately aside, her sea-blue eyes finding her distant subordinate's more pedestrian brown. 'I think, Bryas,' she said slowly, 'you should take us through it again. From the top.'

A twitch at one corner of the junior officer's mouth betrayed the empathetic grin tugging thereat - truth be told, he wasn't altogether sure that _he_ believed it, and it was his own theory - as he nodded acknowledgment. 'Yes, ma'am - soup to nuts.' Carefully, he redeposited a squat sheaf of after action reports beside his uniform cover - itself buried and rediscovered twice so far that evening - unearthing one of the plotting table's four corner-inset control panels and reshuffling his thoughts to pull together a flying run-down of the relevant historical datum points. The adumbrative account that he'd provided initially, he supposed, he might do just as well to fill out the second time around.

'So.' Bryas tapped a quick string of commands into the control inset, pulling up on the visible half of the tabletop display a collage of images showing off various specimens of antiquated computer hardware. 'Rewind to a point somewhere around two or three centuries ago - just as the radical Six-Days and the 'Hadi fundamentalists were touching off the first brushfires that would grow into the Great Destruction.' Owing to the near-systematic _disarticulation_ of the historical record at the end of the preceding era, the margins of error attendant upon the chronology of mankind's Last War, and upon that of the earliest years of his long sojourn beneath the Surface, had in all actuality never been cogently pushed inside of four decades: although the zero point, gone now some two hundred seven years, of the 'Rose Calendar' currently in use - so named for the Layered University professor, Doctor Rosary Graham, who had first opted to reckon events in tems of years' remove from the day that Layered had been permanently sealed - although by commonly-accepted convention the zero point of the Rose Calendar was taken to mark the beginning of man's life underground, and thus in every practical sense the _terminus ante quem_ of the Great Destruction, the date was at best a pedagogical compromise, if not a lie outright. Posterity, despite the unparalleled _moment_ of the conflict - 'global' to the fullest measure ever recorded, and very likely the fullest imaginable - would in greatest probability never know precisely when it had unfolded.

'By then, electronic computing - in one form or another - had been in practical use for at least a hundred years, if not more, and was predicated on basic principles that were nearly as old.' If he correctly recalled some of his ancillary reading on the subject, in neither hardware development nor soft- had true stagnation set in before the end, not quite, but to all extant evidence they _had_ grown only along a very narrow range of possible lines. 'Strongly centripetal factors in the evolution of pre-Destruction information and communications technology - the "internet", for example, which as far as we've been able to determine was a sort of crude analog of the metwork in place throughout Layered and across the redeveloped Surface today - centripetal factors in pre-Destruction ICT had generally fostered a high degree of uniformity across the board, essentially acting as a low-level, passive deterent to any sort of deep-level experimentation with new programming architecture, although there were still occasional attempts to break new trails.

'Case in point at hand, Arthur Delling.' At the name - omitted, in the interest of brevity, from Bryas' more tentative first sketch of his conclusions - Fossman and Lieutenant Katze traded a startled glance, theirs, as it seemed, a somewhat greater conversance than his own with the man's body of work. On the plotting table display, another quarter dozen keystrokes substituted for the collection of archive stills an ID-cropped photo of a dark-haired, fair-skinned man at either the end of his third decade or the threshold of his fourth, his easy, affable smile turned on a camera whose daughter image had doubtlessly outlived it by centuries; the device itself, at best odds, had been more or less evenly distributed across the Surface - along with most everything else of the world that had been - as disassociated atoms. 'As far as anyone's been able to follow his life through the history of the era, he was either employed directly by a mid-sized electronics firm called Archode Limited, or otherwise affiliated with them as some sort of high-level consultant - on that count, the data are somewhat ambivalent.'

Fossman stirred, perhaps to interject with a clarifactory note, but at Bryas' surreptitious wave-off held his peace. It was a commonly held rule of thumb, constant enough to pass very nearly for mathematical law, that the general fragmentation of surviving post-Destruction records increased in direct accord with proximity to the Great Destruction itself, in the greater number of cases eventually outstripping even the enduring human capacity to intuit the ordered patterns operant behind the world's chaotic façade; in the years antedating the adoption of the Rose Calendar circa 24 STa - perhaps in remembrance of the society that had been lost to her generation not in the annalistic abstract, as it was to Bryas', but with a brutal, wrenching immediacy as she and her contemporaries watched literally their entire world fall to ruin around them, Rosary Graham had applied to the calendrical system that would later bear her name the Latinate annual designator _sub terra_, or 'under the earth'; the fourteen years lapsed since E-Day had by logical extension been marked STm or _super terram_, 'above the earth' - prior to 24 STa, across not inconsiderable timespans was the historical record often more lacuna than not, into which individual, institutional, and geopolitical details alike had disappeared both _en masse_ and without trace.

In the subtler biographical hues of Arthur Delling's life, however, Bryas was rather less interested than he was in the legacy he had left behind. 'In either event' -with a quirk of his wrist he waved the matter aside- 'for our purposes the most salient point to be brought out is that he was a programming engineer, specializing in systems security.

'-

'I'm sorry, Bryas, to interrupt,' Major Harrison held up a dilatory finger, 'but was Archode an independent company, or a defense contractor?'

Taken somewhat off his guard, the younger officer braced a precariously angled pile of folders against the spread of one hand as he worked it into a stabler alignment with the other, borrowing the second or so requisite to the task to root around in the relevant stack of memories and collect his thoughts. At first blush the major's seemed a query altogether orthogonal to his line of presentation, and yet...

Bryas took his hands from the tower of righted files and gave the topmost an absent pat, satisfied that it would no longer topple at the next stray breath of air and bury him alive beneath a manilla-and-cream avalanche.

And yet, not only did his superior carry around atop her shoulders the most incisively analytical mind of which he'd ever heard tell, but she'd learned - on the fly and on her own, what was more - to manage the extended intelligence-gathering apparatus of the Earth Government Defense Force in its totality; while he and his fellow Officer Candidates had been wrestling light poles and drainage pipes in the sand pits at OCS, she had taken up a mantle that of right ought not have fallen across any less than flag-ranked shoulders. Whatever her other proclivities, Gilina Harrison most certainly did _not_ pose irrelevant questions.

'They weren't originally an official organ of state, no, ma'am,' Bryas answered after his moment's consideration - 'but by the end...' He threw out an arm, palm flipping ceilingward in a non-plussed shrug. '...well, what wasn't?

'When things really started to get bad - once...strategic arms restrictions had been lifted - what was left of the United States government-' At that he drew his explanation up short, then rolled his hand through a brisk, qualificatory motion. 'By that I of course mean the _legitimate_ government,' he specified parenthetically - 'not the pretender state Six-Day reactionaries had set up in the west.' Despite the gravity of their discussion he caught an amused flutter in the set to Major Harrison's expression, who after three years was well acquainted with - and had always demonstrated a thoroughly indulgent patience for - his inner historian's zeal for precision. 'But once the wheels started to well and truly come off,' Bryas began again, 'what was left of the US government declared martial law in a rope's-end effort to hold the country together, at which point it appropriated all non-essential state, municipal, or otherwise civilian resources.' In the final analysis it had proven nothing quite so much as it had an exercise in bleakest futility, for of all the national banners without count to march in the train of pre-Destruction history, none had survived the passage through the vale of Armageddon itself - yet as a stopgap, the measure _had_ forestalled the inevitable for some decades: though battered and bloodied almost to the point of irrecognition, the United States had been one of the final six or seven nations still clinging - if that only by a tattered and fraying thread - to cohesive existence when the duodecuple doors of Layered had sealed. 'The pertinent chronology's a Surface-forsaken nightmare to try piecing together, but it's clear enough, at least, that organizations with any significant military-industrial capacity were the first they absorbed and repurposed; given the mostly indirect applications of its work, Archode probably wouldn't have been a _top_ priority after the conflict - well, con_flicts_, technically - began escalating out of control, but there's no real question that it was snapped up in the first round of appropriations.'

'Mm.' What exactly he might have answered, Bryas couldn't have said, for as little as Major Harrison's bilabial, nasalized grunt of acknowledgment gave away, her cerulean gaze, fixed on a point hundreds of kilometers or years - or both - removed from their small, anonymous gathering of Defense Force officers, revealed markedly less; to what depths might have run the waters at ocean's surface, still and contemplative as the mythical 'Sargasso Sea' of pre-Destruction fable, he could only guess.

And then, as quickly as she'd left them she was back, returned from the hunt for whatever connection between the present conflict and a long-defunct defense firm she might have glimpsed atrail. 'I see.' In one practiced motion she thumbed and plucked free her slate's stylus, and set to taking down a quick-fire battery of notes; watching her hand jitter back and forth across the virtual page, it occurred to Bryas somewhat peripherally that, by simple virtue of its contents - running to hundreds of hand-written pages at the inside, and very possibly thousands - the unassuming device in Major Harrison's hands was probably the single most highly classified piece of EarthGov tech to be found outside a CARTA lab. 'But I'm sorry, Bryas - please, continue. You were saying that Delling's area of expertise was systems security..?' she prompted.

'It's no trouble, ma'am,' he waved away the polite apology, although he couldn't entirely dispel from his voice the absent, hollow tones of lingering curiosity. 'It's actually his work government-side I was after anyhow...'

But then with a decisive blink and a quick jerk of his head he shook off the momentary distraction, and under cover of another key command he drew a mute breath, preparing himself to retrace his revelatory steps; as momentous as had been the contents of the brief he'd given two weeks prior, this... _This is in a league all its own._

Dismissed by Bryas' keystrokes, the file photo of Arthur Delling retreated back into the databanks whence it had been summoned, and the active half of the plotting table snapped to a graph bounded by axes that appeared to mark off information transfer rates, directional flow of information, and system access quotients. If pressed for the Controller's honest truth, Bryas would have had to confess the inability to follow the involuted dataview in any more than what Fossman would have called a 'quick and dirty' sort of way - his own was an intellect trained to read broader historical or theater-level trends, not the relativistic interplay of machine code and central processing units - though such was sufficient to shade in at least a rough outline of its contents.

'But, yes,' he resumed his account, flicking his wrist in an arc that took in the pair of junior officers across the table, 'like Fossman and Lieutenant Katze, in the main Delling's work revolved around intrusion and counter-intrusion protocols, and encompassed all the peripheral concerns you'd expect to go along with them - basically modern netsec sans a few bells and whistles, although they evidently knew it as "cyber security", back then.' The charcoal shoulders of his uniform jacket twitched in another shrug, this time for the vicissitudes of linguistic drift.

'A lot of what we do _now_'s actually based on what Delling _did_,' Fossman threw in - 'for our MOS, he's pretty much standard reading at FIT.' In substance a technical school set against a martial backdrop, Further Individual Training provided the enlistedman and officer both with a firm grounding in the nuts-and-bolts fundamentals of their chosen military occupational specialty, running the vocational gamut from the infantryman's twelve-week Advanced Tactical Instruction to the logistician's (scarcely less grueling) six-month Materiel and Transportation Management.

Bryas concurred with a nod. 'Under normal circumstances he'd fall well outside my own purview,' he admitted, tapping at the corner inset, 'but for reasons that should presently be clear...' As he entered his last key prompts his voice arced up and drew out into an attenuated holding note, throwing a phonetic bridge across the conceptual gulf into which his attention momentarily dipped to maintain continuity of thought. '...I'd go so far as to argue that Arthur Delling's one of the most important individuals that most of us have never heard of.'

On the display appeared one green line and one red, each snaking from graph's left to it's opposite right in almost a mirror image of the other's path; as the total number of data packets transfered, as indicated by the horizontal axis, increased toward the theoretical upper limit at plot's far end, the green and red lines denoting the percentage of system architecture accessed peaked and troughed respectively, whereafter they reversed direction and pulled the overall pattern toward a less symmetrical inversion point farther along.

'In his day,' Bryas explained, 'CIP's consisted of a static, single-tier response to any attempt at hostile electronic entry to a given coding structure - whether it happened to be a defense network, a media library, or a dataslate's OS.' His hand bounced illustratively from a point above the plotting table to another somewhat nearer the half-page-sized device on which Major Harrison was still busily making notes; Bryas couldn't quite head off the amused observation, however wildly irrelevant it was at present, that her slate must surely have been as much a part of her duty attire as was the gray piping of her uniform, or the brass oak leaf that shone on the right face of her jacket's high collar. 'By modern standards, their methods were crude and then some, and really just boiled down to putting the biggest possible stick in play - whichever system could throw the most raw power at the other typically came out on top.' All in all the prevailing pre-Destruction approach to netsec frankly put him in mind of the foolhardy practice - the foolhardy, richoceting-off-the-walls _lunatic_ practice - of lining up opposing, musket-equipped armies at point-blank ranges and turning them loose on one another by way of organized warfare, as per the order of the day close on to a millenium gone. _Damned idiotic way to go about prosecuting a war..._ He felt certain enough that there had been no shortage of tactical nuance to the organization, maneuvering, and outfitting of any body of infantry so deployed - most of which, he felt equally sure, were likely dark to him - but nonetheless it seemed to him nothing if not a doctrine tailor-made to accrue unnecessary casualties.

'Now.' At a tap the active half of the display dimmed save for a narrow bar near plot's left, highlighting the segment wherein the green and red lines reached, respectively, the zenith and nadir of their march rightward. 'In the short-term, the balance of relevant factors in any given encounter almost invariably favored government or otherwise official networks, because of the sheer number of assets in line behind them: mil-spec computer systems, larger reserves of trained personnel, near-bottomless funding - in relative terms - and deterrent factors like the intrinsic difficulty of cracking their 'firewalls', as they called them, or the threat of throw-the-key-away prosecution.' Amidst the general pandemonium and fracture of late pre-Destruction history, there were on offer no few tales of would-be 'revolutionaries' or anarchists who, after an ill-advised foray into restricted cyberspace, had disappeared into maximum-security holding centers to contemplate the folly of their ways; even diminished as they were, by the end, the few remaining United States and - most especially - Lesser Britain had taken a dim view of any who thought to turn the rising tides of disorder to quick personal or otherwise interested gain.

'But because of the nature of the beast,' Bryas continued, 'on a long enough timeline it wasn't uncommon for said balance to wind up tipping in the other direction.' Fingers bouncing on the control inset, he keyed the plot now to a highlighted view of its last third or so, by which point the same red and green lines had reversed their orientation and - again, respectively - plateaued and bottomed out. 'These days EarthGov computer networks run Mirage's a damned close second for heavy-weight title, and to all evidence some of their pre-Destruction counterparts were an order of magnitude larger at least.' His head swung left-to-right-to-left in fleeting, dismissive amusement. 'Which isn't to lend any undue credence to the host of half-baked "theories" ' -he gave the first two fingers of each hand a sarcastic crook- 'that've cropped up in recent years claiming we've "grossly underestimated" the size of the _antefinem_ population...' As with so much of the world that had gone before, the irresoluble problem of its demography had always provided more grist for the controversial mill than it had verifiable fact - but even so the nine- and ten-digit figures that some of the present decade's historians had posited were flatly beyond the pale. '...but it's enough to note that, as ponderous as our own are today, the secure networks meant to service the military-political apparatus of larger pre-Destruction nations would've been even slower to adapt.' It was Bryas' personal and abiding suspicion that the extended EGDF defense network, haphazardly crash-upscaled along with the rest of the Earth Government's military arm in the two years since the war's opening shots, strained near to breaking the traditional semantic limits of the qualifier 'jury-rigged', and he knew both first- and second-hand that any substantial overhaul in one quarter would carry out to the others only at its own weeks- or even months-long pace; what Herculean labors must have lain behind the upkeep or upgrade of a pre-Destruction analog he could only imagine, and that with sympathetic reluctance.

'In lanicrete terms,' he summed up, 'that meant that a high-end government system was usually all but untouchable right out of the gate, but in subsequent years tended to lose ground to the more pliable methods and programming standards of non-state operators - it would be like...' He tossed a hand into the air, corraling his thoughts in search of a utile simile. '...like playing Chess or Counter-Point against a phenomenal opponent who always used _exactly_ the same strategy: no matter how ingenious it might be, given enough time you could probably find a way around it, eventually.' And so the criminal and terrorist element had - only on a mercifully few occasions that history could recall, but, in a world already distracted by the tumult and global upset of the Great Destruction, on each to generally horrific effect.

Then Bryas swept his upraised hand to the side. 'But Arthur Delling changed...all of that.'

A command prompt chased away the graph charting out system performance, and a second called up another image of the Archode engineer - only, to judge by the clipped strings of text streaming from the bottom and right-hand edges of the ID photograph, by the time it had been taken it was under government, rather than civilian, auspices that he toiled; the private sector as he'd known it in better days was, by then, little more than fast-fading memory of the same, banished from his world without hope or promise of recall. As it happened the dates attached to the identification card were more firmly fixed than most in Delling's middle and (few) later years, though even had they been otherwise one might have measured something of the progress of wider events in his haunted visage: gone was all hint of levity and easy good humor, in their room only the relentless, all-consuming _drive_ of a man who had looked upon the face of the abyss and vowed to pull back his nation from the crumbling precipice.

The display shifted then to a menagerie of contemporary...newspaper...clippings - that anyone could not only turn their world's trees to such flagrantly disposable use, but do so both as a matter of instutionalized quotidian course and by the metric fucking _ton_, Bryas' rigidly conservation-minded upbringing simply could not reconcile with any fathomable reality, but there was no reasonable doubt that pre-Destruction society had indeed so utilized its resource wealth - the table display shifted to a composite of several news clippings, each, as it seemed, leading with a more dire headline than the last. 'There've been a lot of verbal fistfights in academic circles over the proverbial straw,' Bryas hedged, 'but for my money the real beginning of the end wasn't the breakdown of international commerce and the global economy, or even the first wave of strategic arms strikes - it was the total collapse of the United States' electronic infrastructure.' His head moved in a somber, rhetorical negative as he spoke. 'By that point they were the last power standing that could - conceivably - have still made a difference, maybe rallied enough of what nations were left to head off the worst of what was coming; once they'd lost the capability to effectively project any kind of power...' He shook his head again, this time for want of a vocabulary that could have scaled to anything like the enormity of what had followed, to humanity's precipitous tumble down the longest, steepest slippery slope in its collective history; he wondered if they'd had any true conception of what lay at the bottom, or the horrors marking their descent - or if, even in their darkest nightmares, they _could_ have formulated any such. Somehow, he doubted it.

But, he was getting a shade ahead of himself. 'By about the middle of the second decade into what we know now as the Great Destruction,' he backtracked, pulling up a mid-quality scan of an old political map, 'the country had been cut basically in half - the central third of it was essentially uninhabitable, and mostly ocean at that.' In the far north, between the five thousand-kilometer march of a mountain range provisionally (and altogether unimaginatively) identified as the 'Rockies' and the southward flow of a great, continent-spanning river whose real name had never been satisfactorily untangled - what hydronym might have lurked within the hopeless garble of redundant consonants was any historian's guess - there lay only an annihilation-blasted wasteland that gave out well above the forty-fifth parallel, lashed along its eerily uniform southern shoreline by the tides of a boiling, radioactive cauldron that would have burned the hardiest of extremophiles to cancerous ash. And yet, so early on in the hundred-year apocalypse that posterity, traumatized almost beyond description, would numbly christen the Great Destruction, the North American landmass was still largely recognizable in outline, provided an approximate familiarity with its traditional littoral circuit - the worst of the geological indignities to be visited upon it, Bryas knew, had still lain ahead.

'But because of the all-pervading electronic integration of the civilized world in general, and the US in particular - plus the number of redundancies built into major communications hubs and arteries throughout the continent - in geopolitical terms nothing had _really_ changed.' Up from the lower reaches of the Defense Force's datastores swam a school of three hundred year-old photographs, variously centered on construction projects in their several stages of completion, a field of lanicrete - or rather, _con_crete, as they'd used back then - launch pads, and what appeared to be a series of large-scale excavation projects. 'Using a variety of transportation work-arounds, within a couple of years they'd knit the country back together as tightly as ever - to read most of their literature from the period, you'd almost never know that something like thirty-nine percent of it was, practically speaking, gone.' A stunning testament, if ever there had been one such, to the emotional, as well as the intellectual and technological, adaptive capacity of the species: millions of their fellow countrymen dead or no, unnumbered millions of acres of farmland burned out of quantifiable _existence_ or no, the people of the late pre-Destruction United States had simply picked themselves up and obstinately - _defiantly_ - gone about the business of living their lives, even as the global train took wild, flying leave of its rails.

'Surface Above,' Katze murmured, the first that she'd spoken in some minutes; a set of pale eyes that oscillated between sky blue and an almost pastel jade, depending upon the angle and intensity of the ambient lighting, were fairly bolted to the table. 'Are those suborbital transport launches..?' Bryas followed her line of sight to one of the great, square expanses of concrete on display, and the acceleration rails angling heavenward from pad's center. 'One of the Operators back at Outpoint told me about them, once - where in the world did they find the resources to build _those_ after losing half the country?'

'In their own coffers, believe it or not. A lot of their fiscal policies pretty well set the benchmark for "reckless" in later years' -a charitable understatement, as far as Bryas was concerned- 'but since they'd leaned so heavily on extranational wealth throughout so much of their history, they had pretty hefty stockpiles to fall back on.' That most of their largest debtors had already been hip-deep in the process of coming apart at the political seams hadn't hurt either. 'As much as it was anything else, the continental US was basically just a giant, forty-eight hundred kilometer storehouse they'd spent the past two or three hundred years either filling or...well, not using.' A shrug. 'By the time the Great Destruction rolled around they'd amassed more than enough fuels, raw materials, and precious ores to sustain a hundred years of closed-loop operation - probably twice that, if they'd parcelled it out conservatively enough.' Katze accepted his explanation with a nod.

'So, since they couldn't go _through_ the middle of the country anymore,' Bryas continued, 'they went over and under it instead.' He threw a careless hand at the spread of images between them. 'Detailed plans for suborbital and maglev transportation networks had actually been on the shelves for decades, and the necessary tech had been readily available for even longer - it was just a matter of dusting them off and working out the last few design kinks.' Tunneling under a quasi-inland sea that hadn't existed twenty years prior had provided an unanticipated wrinkle, though as a practical matter hadn't shaken out as much more than a problem in applied engineering.

'And for a while, it worked.' Within each of the digitized photographs time flickered ahead in weeks- or months-long increments, first steel frameworks and then concrete walls rising from their foundations to take the form of commuter stations, transport hangars, and car yards; magnetic rails spiderwebbed across sprawling train depots in two-dimensional labyrinths of which only life-long conductors could have made any negotiable sense, a few thrown out along various points of the compass to anchor their hubs to the horizon. Toward the end of the time-lapsed sequence passengers appeared on platforms and boarding ramps, wending their way in lines and knots and crowds toward their chosen mode of conveyance; Bryas' chin jerked to indicate the cross-country travelers. 'By the twenty-year mark or thereabouts life in the US had begun moving toward something like equilibrium - or toward whatever passed for it, back then - and as their situation stablized over the next decade there was a prevailing sense that they'd stood the worst of the storm and come out the other side: intranational transit had been restored, strategic reserves had ensured the continued supply or operation of basic amenities, and staple production had been ramped up in the rest of the country to compensate for the loss of the grain belt. There was no way they could've possibly turned back the military, industrial, or economic clock to its pre-war set inside of a quarter century,' he cautioned, 'if ever, but thanks to a slew of recovery initiatives they _had_ actually made lengthy strides in that direction, and were even laying plans to begin reaching out to their remaining allies again when their data, communications, and power grids - everything - went down.'

_When it all fell spectacularly apart._

'Wait a second,' Fossman interjected, one eye narrowed a hair further than the other in a lopsided, skeptical squint - '_everything_ went down? _All_ the backups and _all_ the in-built redundancies?' He gave a breathy, incredulous grunt. 'The odds of every single one of them failing simultaneously are...'

'_Technically_ nonzero,' Katze supplied, her features a mirror-perfect reflection of her colleague's disbelief, 'but only because - technically - it's not a _complete_ physical impossibility.' Her tone and expression were the very model of unconvinced. 'Unless their systems were thrown together by a twelve-year-old or an especially bright toolchest, there's no way they would've quit all at once like that on their own.'

Eyes a pale shade removed from the color of dark chocolate crinkled in amusement as they flicked interestedly from one subordinate to the other, though Captain Averies otherwise kept her peace; Bryas shook his head in agreement. 'My sentiments exactly. The aforementioned odds beg the obvious conclusion that they had help from someone - or several "someones", more probably - well-placed within the American government, but the who and the why of it have never been as clear-cut as the what.' He set his hands parallel to one another in front of him in a kinaesthetic sketch of a room. 'Sit down three period historians at the same table, and chances are you'll get six theories back to explain the attack and who was behind it - most of them mutually exclusive, and all of them with their own problems.'

His hands translated left, now in symbolic delimitation of one potential culprit. 'For instance, given the vitriol of their rhetoric and their militant disposition in general, on the surface 'Hadi Fundamentalists are a logical suspect - but taken as a whole there were also stridently Luddite undercurrents to the worldview their group evidently espoused, and on balance it's not all that likelly they could've mustered the skill sets for something either that sophisticated or on that scale.' To say nothing of both the improbability and the impracticality convergent upon the infiltration of so-called 'sleeper agents' at the necessary levels of a hostile - or 'infidel', as the 'Hadis would have had it - foreign government; traditional staple of cinematic fare though the concept was, the vanishingly few debriefing files to cross Bryas' desk with such operations in tow had unanimously cast 'deep cover, late recall' assignments in a considerably less romanticized and, indeed, thoroughly inglamorous light. Of all the high-risk enterprises to which an intelligence outfit might commit its resources they ranked among the chanciest, and, given the number of Murphy's wrenches that invariably tumbled into the works, they rarely yielded dividends commensurate with the initial investment.

'Others,' he continued, hands shifting rightward, 'have trotted out the Russian Republics as a more likely candidate, since they'd emerged as a relatively potent second-rate power after their eventual recovery from the collapse of the Soviet Union - but they either overlook or conveniently forget that the Cold War had passed out of living memory at least two generations prior, and in either event have never explained how or where the Republics would've found the time to do anything of the kind with their own confederation in the process of self-destructing.' Nor, more daming still, had such scholars recognized for what it was the widespread exaggeration - endemic to much of the pertinent literature - of the animosity between the two pre-Destruction superpowers: for all the frenzy and drive of the runaway military buildup on both sides of the 'Iron Curtain', their mutual enmity had never struck very much more than shallow roots.

Now, though, Bryas let his palms fall flat atop the plotting table to take some of his weight; across memory's slate there paraded a terse _bibliography_ of posited alternatives, arranged by near-unconscious reflex in descending order of probability, but... 'All things considered, I'd argue that Six-Day radicals are the likeliest actors,' he moved his explanation along - 'they unquestionably had the motive, almost certainly had the means, and by then they were a deeply embedded feature of US political reality.' The jigsaw elements of that particular scenario, of course, most persuasively adhered only with a certain, judicious recourse to no little interpolative glue - but leap for leap their arrangment entailed the fewest and least insuperable stumbling blocks.

As fanatical regressives, the Six-Days had fallen little enough short of their 'Hadi counterparts as made no difference...yet as the United States' own homegrown brand of quasi-millennarian radicalism they had also remained more or less firmly enmired within a relentlessly forward-marching society, and so inherited - quite apart from any volitional impulse - a broad-base reserve of relatively advanced technical know-how. Added to the natural cover afforded native-born citizens, and a growing influence upon the machinery of state in an increasingly turbulent political environment, such would have left them freer than almost any other...interest group...to pursue - with little demur - their shamelessly reactionary agenda.

_And if there's any justice at all in the world, right about now they're burning in the mythical, Surface-forsaken 'Hell' they terrorized their followers with._ It was more snarl than thought, and the reflexive twitch to his lips Bryas staid only on the last edge of a disgusted curl. As did any citizen of the post-Destruction world who had cultivated even the barest rudiments of a working education, he cherished an ardent, quark-deep loathing for the misbegotten religiosity that had first tormented the world and then flung its mutilated, gamma-soaked corpse over the eschatological brink, plunging man and all of his greatest accomplishments into the very _darkest_ age he had ever known. _We'd be colonizing the _Solar System_ by now, if not for them._ Instead, spared only by the grace of a benevolent Surface, the bedraggled remnants of humanity had passed more than a quarter century in lingering convalescence, driven to within a scant - indeed, a _horrifying_, in the deepest and most visceral sense of the word - four digits of an extinction as real and absolute as the end-Cretacious event; the subsequent decennia it had spent all but learning to walk again, and it was a macabre tribute to the species' destructive ingenuity that only now could it begin the reclamation of its own world's Surface.

Of all the old world's most destructive _casus belli_ - among them ideological conflict, resource exhaustion, and ethnic discord - few others, if any, had so handily made monsters of men as had the religious odium turned loose in its twilight decades, and of a certainty _none_ had made of the apocalypse a self-fulfilling prophecy; what specious 'truths' modern parareligious adherents might have uncovered in their sophomoric, pseudo-reconstructions of such atavistic belief systems, Bryas would never fathom.

...but that too, he had to concede, was a discussion best commended to the attentions of a later date. 'Truth be told,' he forged ahead, with an effort drawing back from the tangent that beckoned, 'we may _never_ know who did it - at least not beyond the proverbial "shadow of a doubt" - but the _outcome_ is clear enough regardless.' A tap. 'What strategic bombardment couldn't undo a decade earlier, the nation-wide blackout did.'

Between Major Harrison and Captain Averies the plotting table display darkened to a star's-eye view of the continental United States, the gruesome, longitudinal wound at country's center cleaned and dressed by the fall of night; the American littoral and coastal hinterlands, though, were asparkle with citylight patterned in the boisterous medley of municipal chords, slurs, and tuplets that together composed the final pre-Destruction movement of the millennia-long symphony of urbanization. In spite - or perhaps, in some oblique fashion, all the more because - of the matter at hand, it made for a stunning vista, and for a breath or two Bryas could almost believe the mad tales of an _antefinem_ Surface that teemed with billions, of the hum and hustle of a world not merely filled but _crowded_ with life.

_Almost._

A second peck at the control inset curtailed his reverie, and to first appearances blanked the display; it was the work of some seconds for the eye to pick up the chalky, moonlight glint on the midnight ink of the Atlantic, and pace out the penumbral outline - as much sketched from memory as truly seen - of the extinct nation's eastern seaboard. 'For four weeks, the country went dark, and when-'

'Four _weeks_?' Katze fairly burst out. Her voice had taken on an almost indignant color, and her exclamation hadn't been far removed from a squawk, either. 'Hardware-side their systems weren't as efficient as ours,' she granted dubiously, eyeing the orbital imagery more than a little askance, 'but even allowing for less advanced tech, their grids should've been back up in four _hours_ - days, at the outside.'

Evidently less reticent, now, in her native element, her pale gaze - presently reminiscent of summer-bleached grass - was an industrial laser on the screen as she mused aloud, boring through the nightside gloom in search of answers. 'According to all the palaeo-CS studies I've ever read, their ICT was pretty robust, as a rule - and not even all _that_ far behind ours, since we spent so long playing catch-up; they just hadn't quite seen all the writing on the wall, yet.

'True distributed processing didn't show up till After' -the capital was plain in her enunciation, merited in an otherwise prosaic temporal preposition by only one event in human history- 'since they hadn't quite worked out the theory or the technique to correct for data fragmentation and computational drift - and Surface knows their coding back then was a baroque nightmare - but top-level administrative and command protocols were still pretty decentralized.' She stared down at the former United States from on simulated high, arms taken out along the table to either side in support of a body held now at a thoughtful incline. 'They knew better than to install any kind of "kill switch" or master control station, same as us - it would've been like building a giant "off" switch for the entire country.' Chin-length brown hair swayed back and forth. 'There's no _way_ that failure didn't have help, and a lot of it, too. It would've-'

With a blink and a start Katze remembered the others in the room, then, and snapped back upright; she flashed Bryas a sheepish grin. 'Heh.. Sorry, Toane, didn't mean to hog the spotlight - it's just...' She tapped a close-trimmed fingernail against the tabletop display. 'If your historians were looking for a smoking gun, I can't think of a more obvious one than this.'

Bryas took in the observation with a slow nod, considering. The previously mentioned 'how' and 'why' of the affair remained immaterial, just then, but by and large the point Katze raised _had_ been tabled by the authors on whose body of work he'd drawn. He had nothing even remotely resembling the opportunity to do a proper follow-up, with the _Geisteskrieg_ in full swing - and half a step from rounding an entirely unanticipated bend, unless his intuitive faculties had led him badly astray - but there was a worthwhile line of inquiry there, if he could scare up the spare time to run it down.

_Whenever _that_ might be._ His last weekend of real, uninterrupted liberty had retreated almost beyond memory's horizon.

Katze's suggestion, however, was well made. 'No, you're right,' he assured her - 'they've just tended to gloss over it since there's so little evidence in _any_ direction. All we know for sure is that _someone_ turned out the lights for four weeks - and after they came back on, the US was never the same again.'

He cycled the plotting display through a brisk succession of political maps as he spoke, in collective a stark visual narrative of the final ebb and systolë of centralized American power. 'It took them a while to sift through the fallout and take stock, but in hindsight it's pretty well obvious that any real authority they had beyond the "No-Man's Line", as they called it, effectively ended with the blackout.' In truth they'd retained at least one foothold, and fought to the very last extremities of privation and desperation to maintain it - the ten-month Siege of Cheyenne Mountain remained one of the most famous last stands in known history, and Brigadier-General Isaac Harnon one of the most enduring icons of tragic nobility - but with some regret he let that sleeping tangential dog lie, lest it sidetrack him any further than he already had been. 'The government never officially relinquished its claims to the west, but by then it was all they could do - and more, in a couple of cases - to hold on to what they still had: the years immediately following were spent in stamping out a few attempts at secession on their own side of the continent, and fighting off the repeated invasions of the circum-Caribbean state that had sprung up in the past decade or so.' Forgotten in the fourth-world interstitial between a United States struggling to put its own house back in something akin to order, and a South America sunk hopelessly into civil and inter-cartel war, the economically depressed and mostly-failed states of the Caribbean had fallen easy prey to the better-organized aggressions of their Cuban neighbors.

'And it was _right_ after the blackout that President Camden declared martial law, and pulled Archode - and Arthur Delling - into the fold.' The gloomy tale of the nation's final, albeit hard-fought decline paused on a map describing the inevitable - and to Bryas' mind poetically just - dissolution of the Six-Day splinter state into an internecine patchwork of warring theocracies and robber-baronies, only nineteen years posterior to its formation. 'To some extent they wanted to figure out what the hell had happened, obviously, but mainly they just wanted to ensure that it never happened again, and to that end they set Delling loose on the problem with his own team and virtually limitless funding.' That last in particular Bryas had always read between the evidential lines as a vote of remarkable confidence, in consideration of the pitiless bludgeoning that the national fisc had taken in the preceding years. 'Unfortunately for us, a lot of the details of their work haven't survived, but all the most important gaps we've been able to more or less fill in.'

He took a moment, then, to rifle through a squat manilla tower of logistics tables and early-war force dispositions - less to consult their contents, which he could have recited (and perhaps even did mumble) in his sleep, than to steel himself for the explanatory plunge. All of the foregoing historical expostion amounted, in essence, to little but an extended preface, a cyclone-pace survey of mid-Destruction goings-on meant chiefly to throw his main points into the sharpest possible relief; it was on his interpretation of the evidence adduced thus far that the future course of the war - and incidentally of his career - might well turn. _All the marbles, as they used to say._ He made a final appraisal of the point of no return, gauging the height from which he meant to cast himself like so much stone and the depth of the restless waters below, and then...

...he dove.

'Every preëxisting counter-intrusion protocol, Delling either turned inside out or scrapped and rebuilt from scratch - instead of hunting around for a bigger or a stronger cudgel, in other words, he essentially invented the bow and arrow.'

He fell. Far below him the uncertain tides of peer scrutiny were rippled sapphire glass, their only discernible feature thin, frothy white lines that skirled across the surface like windblown sand.

'Where old-order security software would just throw more and more processing power at a perceived threat in an attempt to overwhelm it, his approach called for a progression of tiered, proportional responses, each - and this is key - adapting to the successes and failures of the one before it. In a very real sense, one set of protocols learned from another.'

He plummeted. Beneath him, variant shadowing on the face of the deep had resolved now into visible undulations, rise giving way to fall giving way to rise again as he accelerated toward terminal velocity; before him, on the plotting table, the satellite imagery - some of the last such taken, before Layered had been sealed - blinked to a familiar biaxial graph adorned with a jagged zig-zag line-plot and a small blizzard of point markers whose arrangement had always seemed devoid of any intelligible organizing principle...until that afternoon.

'The first such tier was designed to attack an intrusive application largely at random, hitting it anywhere and everywhere it could to either stop it in its tracks then and there, or - more importantly, in the long run - start mapping out its programming.' _Random._ 'If the first failed, then the second would kick in and begin targeting hostile coding clusters more selectively, both looking to exploit any available weaknesses and learning how one string related to another.' _Clustered._ 'If that didn't work, then the third step consisted of a focused, program-wide assault meant to overwhelm it altogether, capitalizing on any relationships and vulnerabilities it had turned up.' _All-out._ 'Lastly, failing _that_, it would change tack to the virtual equivalent of surgical strikes, basically, committing all its resources in turn to attacks on either the weakest or the most important coding components.' _Now._

He hurtled. The surface filled his vision, now, near enough to pick out individual waves between the swells as they rushed up to meet him.

'None of the above would matter in the slightest, of course...if it weren't for two additional points.' Bryas clamped his hands around the broad-bezeled edge of the table, certain he would never hold them steady on his own. 'First, although it had never been his intent, Arthur Delling's heuristics were ultimately the jumping-off point for the development of true artificial intelligence - they didn't stumble to that application of his work until a few years later, and he never lived to take much part in subsequent AI research, but it was his efforts that showed the way.' Had a lighter mood prevailed, Bryas might have laughed for the wonder of that most momentous of historical accidents - there were few better measures of the golden age that had been than the _inadvertent_ creation, in the pursuit of another goal altogether, of artificial sapience. 'Second, this pattern of scaled responses is one we've seen before...most recently, spread out across the last two years.'

He plunged. All around him the sea churned, and the tympanic pounding of the surf he would have called deafening, had not his next words pealed in his ears like Neptune's own.

'Gus- The _Geister_...aren't human.'

**G****ILINA**** H****ARRISON**

Gilina Harrison's world reeled, knocked crazily atilt by the moon-weight hammer blow Bryas had dealt; her stylus hung frozen in mid-verb above her dataslate, forgotten save by what few autonomic impulses her body had spared to support it against gravity's subtle tug. Bryas' assertion she had already heard and at least nominally processed...but if in its repetition he had made it to any lesser effect, then the difference could have comfortably walked the molecular line between verity and falsehood.

Nothing had truly changed...

Theirs was still the same enemy they had faced the day and month and year before, theirs still the same resources with which to meet them, and the basic imperative of the frontier forces had altered not a whit: the 'Line had to hold - _would_ hold - lest humanity lose every hard-fought gain it had made in the past decade and a half, and every sacrifice be brought to nothing. The same men and women still served in the same uniforms, and civilian life in the Interior still maintained the same hustle and blissfully ignorant bustle it always had.

...and yet, _everything_ had changed.

A hundred empirical facts that they'd known about the _Geisteskrieg_ only the day before - for that matter, that they'd known that very morning - were _wrong_, and at least half as many operational policies were grossly ill-suited to the foe Bryas had outlined. And their strategy... She might have spared a derisive snort for so charitable a deployment of the term, had human thought unfolded at a lesser approximation of relativistic speeds, and the consideration not come and gone in the space of an eyeblink. Their _strategy_, such as it had subsisted to that point, they would have to rewrite from chapter one. She had once heard Bryas - quoting a pre-Destruction military strategist whose name she had never quite caught - remark that the successful prosecution of any conflict rested on one's ability either to deny an enemy the means, or to break their will, to fight, which observation begged some several uncomfortable questions. _How do you break a _machine's_ will? _Can_ you?_ As far as that went, was there even an identifiable software analog? How precisely one might set about the task of combating an enemy that not only felt no fear, but was physically incapable of processsing the emotion, the Surface only knew.

It was with no more than passing surprise - and that mild - that Gilina realized she had already accepted Bryas' analysis, despite the lingering air of surreality. Not in a century given over to careful consideration of the war would she herself have produced half so startling a conclusion - the discovery two years previous of a separate human enclave, as they'd then believed the _Geister_, had been unexpected enough, but a rogue artificial intelligence, of all things..? - yet in the twilit realm wherein her instincts roamed unbridled she had taken its weight and its measure, and by every applicable rubric it all hung together.

In fact- In a sudden tumble some dozen or more miscellaneous, and previously orphan facts spilled onto memory's stage, the balance of them parenthetical comments drawn from field and after action reports otherwise forgotten. Speaking, as they had, to such seemingly disconnected curiosities as the oddly mechanical character of the _Geisteswehr's_ tactical evolutions; the inexplicably rigidity with which its pilots always seemed to fly; or the thoroughgoing opacity of whatever _eldritch_ strain of logic might have motivated its theater-level movements, at the time they had left behind little impression...but now snapped all of a piece into perfect, laser focus.

Bryas had the right of it, simple as that. It was true to the point of axiomatic in the intelligence community that, once stripped of the demonstrably impossible, such explanation as remained was necessarily correct, however unlikely, and in two years Bryas Toane was the only analyst brave or mad or committed enough to see the principle through to its logical conclusion - vetted, moreover, by the intuition that not once in the three and a half decades Gilina called her own had ever failed her. She could _feel_ the gears catch, a hundred theretofore mismatched evidentiary teeth meshing at last - not with the loose-fit rattle of simple plausibility, but with finely-engineered, water-tight cogency. _A perfect fit._

Kim Averies, however, was less convinced - or rather, less inclined to so easily let her subordinate off of the proverbial hook; captain fixed lieutenant with a gaze one might have called 'keen' just for a start, her chocolate-colored eyes rich with an intensity that Gilina would never before have thought to associate with the confectioner's delicacy. 'When you say the _Geister_ aren't human,' she spoke into the silence that had decended again over the room, 'are you suggesting that we've been dealing with an army of AI's, or automata directed by a single intelligence?' Aloud the notion sounded ridiculous, an absurd jumble of words that only an hour gone would have had no business in one another's company outside the drug-fevered ravings that might echo from a sanitarium hallway...but that was an hour ago; no one was laughing.

Bryas flipped a palm ceilingward by way of hesitant shrug, a gesture of scrupulously non-committal reticence at rather unusual odds with his typically forthright manner of presentation - though given the distance he'd already ventured out onto the proverbial limb, Gilina could hardly fault him for his caution. 'I couldn't say for sure, ma'am,' he told her carefully - 'either we don't have the right data to make that kind of determination, or I haven't spent enough time studying them in...this context.'

Cocoa drill bits bored into the junior officer, though a smile that was not unkind softened their bite. 'Speculate.'

At Kim's permission - and it was, to be sure, more invitation than injunction for a man like Bryas - his guard relaxed to something more like its wonted low. 'Yes, ma'am...' he nodded in semi-absent contemplation, momentarily sightless eyes already combing the stacks of the small _library_ he evidently carried around in his head; the number of her officers who could absorb and retain information in the quantities Bryas did, Gilina could have counted on her own two hands and found fingers to spare. 'In that case...' His eyebrows climbed a couple of rhetorically inquisitive centimeters. 'Best guess? Somewhere in-between the two.

'Even before the Controller had issued the Carter Edicts' -banning any and all AI research from 137 STa on, if for reasons that, as far as Gilina knew, had never been very much better than opaque- 'creating a viable artificial intelligence was still a tricky business - Crest and Mirage were the only powers that could ever muster the technical and resource bases to make the attempt, and even they only managed it once apiece.' The decision to take Camille and Madison offline remained one of the most volatile flashpoints touched off in Layered or post-Destruction history, rousing the very bitterest opposition in every quarter and from every walk of life, yet from its course, for whatever reasons charted, the Controller had refused to be turned aside; in the event it had at last stripped velvet glove from silicon gauntlet, ordering in stark, implacable terms that the ChiFor and MARSer detachments on scene stand down and - with no small profusion of irony, as events some decades subsequent would prove - dispatching a trio of Armored Core Teams to each AI complex to...disperse...the more intransigent elements assembled in protest and to make an end of its distant kith. _I wonder if it thought of them, before it died..._ A foolish thought, as much in its sentiment as in its anthropomorphic formulation, but Gilina had always wondered about it all the same. 'Unless _Geist_ methods are at least an order of magnitude more efficient than ours were,' Bryas moved on, 'each individual AI would be too valuable an asset to deploy on the front lines, or to field in the kinds of numbers we've seen.

'That said, _given_ the apparent size of the _Geisteswehr_' -his mouth took on a sardonic crook; if there was a bottom to _that_ barrel, the frontier forces had yet to scrape it- 'it's probably most reasonable to assume there's more than one AI at the helm - even accounting for unknown advances they might've made, only the Controller had anywhere near the kind of raw processing capacity you'd need to manage the ghost war machine by itself.' And the Controller was one of a kind, an engineering and programming marvel of a size with a thirty-story building and banked by several square blocks of cooling apparatus, to say nothing of the maintenance and other out-facilities constellationed around it - or rather, it had been, before that lunatic Unin had made an end of _it_, smashing through every single and last defense thrown up in his path like Destruction incarnate and upending the societal applecart with a stroke.

'But what's to say,' Kim pressed, 'that it's really an AI we've been shadowboxing this whole time? What makes you certain that this' -an index fingernail tapped twice against the tabletop- 'is more than just chance resemblance?' Head cocked a few evaluative degrees to the side, the captain wore a decidedly avian aspect as she studied her subordinate, though to Gilina's thinking she recalled more the raptors they occasionally spotted on the wing than any of _Neue's_ surviving species of sparrow.

'_Certain_, ma'am?' Bryas signed in the negative. 'Nothing. Confident, though...' His glance strayed to the thick black notebook - a clunky archaism that would forever lie beyond Gilina's comprehension - in which he'd been setting down one or another point of interest when she arrived; presently it vied with an EGDF coffee mug for the kingship of a rectangular-layered, off-white hill. 'The pattern of _Geist_ attacks is really only a pattern at all within the framework of Delling's netsec work and the counter-intrusion protocols he wrote, which it matches essentially verbatim. The random battles of the early months; the way they tended to concentrate in one area or another over the following year; the mass-assault on the 'Line two weeks ago; and now the drive on Four-Thirteen Forward - I honestly couldn't have _engineered_ a better fit for the data than Gus's already given us.' Far from dismay, to word of the battle raging around the NorthSEC command hub his initial response had in fact borne unseemly resemblance to open delight, little removed from the breathless wonder of childhood discovery - wholly inexplicable, until grounded in the near-phantasmagoric brief that had followed.

But Kim was relentless. 'And if you're wrong?' she challenged. 'You've misjudged the _Geister_ before.'

_Ouch_. By dint of long-standing familiarity with the captain's command style, Gilina maintained easy enough purchase on neutrality of expression, but to her right she saw Katze's eyes go a few, disbelieving millimeters wider. _Must not have worked much with Kim, yet._ And in truth, she rather doubted the young captain could have put very much finer a point on her observation than that, accurate as it was - yet if it had never been her wont to pull her punches, it had always been so to a purpose. There was no malice to her conduct, nor would she ever browbeat a subordinate for an honest mistake, but it _was_ her ablest officers with whom she took the very hardest, least compromising line - she was always pushing, always testing their limits, driving them to be the best because she knew that they could be. Bryas Toane she had marked out as one such early on - months before Gilina herself would have taken any note, in fact - and in consequence rode him harder than she did most, but to all evidence she had not chosen poorly.

' "Misjudged"?' To the ostensible rebuke he replied with an easy, self-deprecating chuckle - contributing only further to Katze's surprise, Gilina suspected; the second lieutenant's eyes were fast wearing a curious, pale green track into the air between Bryas and Kim. 'That's a more generous appraisal than I would've given, ma'am. In light of this' -an open hand passed over the assembled files, meager bounty of two years' hard intellectual labor- 'I'd say I was about as wrong as it was possible to be - in a very real sense, Gus wasn't even reacting to us at all.

'But _this_' -again he indicated the spread of folders and printouts, and by extension his interpretation thereof- 'is different. No one thinks my conclusions are more insane than I do,' he promised her, 'but they also make sense of everything we've seen to date - if there's a better account of the _Geist_ prosecution of the war, then I haven't found it.

'And even if I were wrong' -within the casual spread of his hands lay a tacit dismissal, fairly abrim with confidence, of that likelihood- 'we wouldn't be any worse off than we are now - and we might just learn a few things from _Geist_ reactions to any change in our offensive posture along the way.'

At last Kim smiled in full, satisfaction and a teacher's pride softening her gaze alike - a raptor's agate gaze still, but fixed rather upon one of her own than a potential quarry; she nodded, pleased. 'Well, I'd say you've made a believer out of me, Bryas.' She looked then to Gilina, trim eyebrows rising in query. 'Major?'

Lips a shade on the thin side but well-formed for all that canted in the makings of a grin. 'I think he had me at "aren't human",' she informed them lightly - a jest, in its delivery, but little shy of the truth given instinct's affirmation so far ahead of conscious acceptance, like an intuitive reconnaissance screen ranged afront the intellectual van. 'But allowing the accuracy of your analysis, Bryas,' she regarded her junior more seriously, 'it seems to me there's only one real question on the table: what now?' Forgotten till just then between thumb and forefinger, her stylus she slipped back into her dataslate to resume her written train of thought later. 'Where do we take this from here?' she elaborated, waving her slate at the manilla-cream wall rising between them - 'how do we use this?' Along the capacious margins of her immediate attention Gilina's mind had already as good as laid the matter to rest, drawing up fresh requisition orders, sketching out tentative force realignments, and drafting necessary policy changes even as she addressed Kim's young lieutenant - it was her own two shoulders, after all, on which lay ultimate responsibility for any intelligence-based recommendations made to The Colonel - but she was interested to gauge the capability with which Bryas followed the ramifactory paths his work had broken.

If she had harbored any final doubts, however, she plainly need not have worried; of any such remaining, the confidence and competence both with which he fielded the question dispelled the last. 'First and foremost, ma'am, if I'm right then that means that for the first time we can actually _anticipate_ the _Geister_.' The pronouncement he left, as he cycled the plotting display, to hang between them, heavy with moment; at his prompting the performance chart on the active half of the table derezzed, replaced a few hundredths of a second later by a theater-level map of the Silent Line. 'The fourth-phase responses of the protocols Delling wrote were designed to specifically target what, today, we'd call "administrative strings",' he explained, inclining his head toward Fossman and Katze; on the tabletop, four of the forty-two green markers studding the frontier blinked slowly, three spaced approximately equidistant along the 'Line, one sited a short distance behind. 'We actually aren't sure what they would've called them in Delling's day and age, but regardless, these ad strings are used to govern the top-level operation of large sections of interrelated code - to exercise command and control functions, in essence.'

'Now.' Of the four pulsing contacts, the northernmost sprouted a heavy crimson arrow stretching back into the blank-slate interior of _Geistland_. 'If they've correctly identified Four-Thirteen Forward as the C-two center it is - if, in their terms, they've identified it as an "ad string," of sorts - then it's a good bet they'll try again at Midmark and Falon Point as well; Gus might even take a swing at EastCOM Home at some point, if he's woken up on the suicidal side of the bed that morning.' The Mid- and SoSEC command hubs flashed in turn, followed by the regional command's central headquarters, before Bryas looked up again.

'If we can anticipate the _Geister_, then we can take the initiative,' he told Gilina with quiet conviction, an excited, almost electric undercurrent building just a whisper beneath the calm professionalism of his presentation. 'And if we can take the initiative, ma'am, then we can _win_.'

As she considered his words, Gilina stole a moment to study the man as well. At first glance there was nothing to mark him out from any other Defense Force officer...

His fair complected skin, brown eyes, close-cropped hair, and altogether average stature could have belonged - and in no few cases did in fact belong - to any of a thousand other men in uniform, and would have disappeared with near-equal facility in the populations of either Layered or the Interior. His technical scores were solid, if well short of the rarefied heights typically associated with the EGDF's rising stars, and his physical fitness ratings embedded deep within the overall average. His disciplinary record was clean of any serious infraction, though so too were those belonging to the majority of their commissioned ranks, and as she recalled his career jacket, the comments left behind by his superiors were positive without straying too near the superlative.

...and yet, of all the analysts - corporate and government alike - to take part in the two-year siege laid to the theretofore unassailable heights of the riddle that was the _Geisteswehr_, he alone had managed to span the fosse and scale the ramparts. Unassuming, unremarkable, and unknown, Bryas Toane had given them a fighting chance.


End file.
